Page 65 of The Voicemail

Luca stiffens. “It’s impossible to say for sure,” he says, now the apparent spokesperson for the room. “Besides, you don’t know where it is, so it won’t do us any good.”

“But if I found it, this would all be over?” I ask. “Tomaso, Bianchi, all of it? I could go back to my life and never think about any of this ever again?”

“There are other considerations—” Alex starts, but I don’t listen.

I turn on my heel and walk out of his office. Back in my room, I start pacing, racking my brain. Nothing has ever mattered more.

I’m back at Bellamy, kneeling beside the Marchesi shipment. The manifest said a nineteenth-century landscape. Landscape at Dusk. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Milan.

Except there was no painting.

Just foam. Packing supports. An empty crate that should have held something expensive and fragile but didn’t.

I remember the transport guys getting annoyed. I remember Claire calling from the front because a donor needed receipts. I remember Bellamy texting me about a placement change in the west gallery. Everyone needed me at once.

Then the folder slipped loose. Brown. Legal-size. Tucked against the inside wall, wedged behind one of the supports. It fell flat against the concrete when I pulled the foam away.

I picked it up. I put it in my tote. I would have taken it to receiving right after that. I always log loose items in as soon as they arrive. I always follow procedure.

Think, Elena, think.

I went to see Mr. Bellamy. I told him there was nothing in the crate. He dismissed me. Said it didn’t matter. I was upset, I went to Maya’s and we had drinks. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen that tote since that night.

Everything got so chaotic after that. The flowers started arriving. The threatening texts came in. I was under a lot of pressure on top of it all. Did I even take the tote bag home? Someone broke in and went through my things and didn’t find what they were looking for.

Does that mean…

The tote bag is probably still at Maya’s apartment.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper.

I have to go to Maya’s right fucking now. I have to find that bag and then… and then what?

The reasonable part of me says to tell Alex right away. He’ll know what to do. He’ll handle it.

Except I’m furious with him and I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him to bring Maya home, I don’t trust him to take care of me, I really don’t trust him to be a father. So, I have to go. I have to handle this myself.

If I stay here, I’ll be another object in a beautiful room while men decide the acceptable amount of risk for me. I move with urgency.

I throw on black leggings, a hoodie, and sneakers. There’s no plan beyond getting out of this apartment. If I can manage that, I can handle the rest. This part will be tricky, though.

We’re too far up for the window, so I’ll have to find another way out. I crack my bedroom door open and look into the hall. One guard stands near the elevator. Another waits farther down by the service corridor. Neither looks directly at my door.

I wait until the elevator guard turns his head toward the kitchen. Then I step out and walk the other way.

My heart pounds too loudly. Surely everyone can hear it. Surely someone is going to stop me any second and ask what I’m doing. I reach the service corridor and push through the door into a stairwell. We’re a lot of floors up, but it doesn’t matter. If this is how I have to get out of the building, it’s how I have to get out of the building.

I take the stairs too fast. By the fifth floor, nausea climbs up my throat, and I have to stop with one hand on the railing until it passes.

It feels like it takes ages, and my nerves are screaming the whole way down. When I finally reach the bottom, the stairwell opens into a service hallway that smells like bleach and warm metal. Pipes run overhead. A security camera sits in the corner.

A man in a gray uniform steps out of a maintenance room with a clipboard. He stops when he sees me. I stop, too. For one second, neither of us speaks.

“Laundry,” I say stupidly, even though my hands are empty.

His frown deepens, but I don’t give him a chance to respond. I keep walking before he can ask follow-up questions.

The service exit sits at the end of the hall. A keypad beside it nearly ends the whole escape, until I spot a strip of tape over the latch. God bless lazy people.