The only saving grace was that the pin had not been pulled. Yet.
I phoned Rafael to tell him about Deepa. He was pleased with my findings and agreed that this might be the break we needed. Happy that the day seemed to be turning around, I hung up, intending to contact Priya to get any dirt on the dead woman. Much of Pri’s time had been taken up with House business lately, but she could never say no to some good old-fashioned fun unearthing dirty secrets.
That’s when Nicola Montefiore walked into my office and said, “I want to hire you.”
So much for catching a break. In the back of my head, a pin slipped out from a grenade.
Ka-boom.
Chapter 3
Instead of answering, I put a finger to my lips and shut down my phone, motioning for her to do the same. Who knew what tabs Mr. Cybersecurity kept on his wife?
For good measure, I locked up both of our cells in Eleanor’s office, along with my laptop to really nail that paranoia. The graphic designer wasn’t in, but we had each other’s keys. Feeling that I’d secured our environment as best as I could, I returned to my office and indicated Nicola should speak.
“I want to leave Isaac.”
I opened and closed my mouth several times in an excellent guppy impersonation. “Mrs. Montefiore—”
“Nicola, please.” Levi’s mother had always struck me as a quiet woman, slight of frame and backbone. Today her spine was ramrod straight, and there was a determined set to her chin and the tone of her Italian-accented words.
“Did something happen last night?” Had Isaac found out about my nocturnal visit and taken out his anger on his wife? “Are you in physical danger if you remain in your house?”
“No. Isaac has never laid a hand on me, but…” She fiddled with the artfully knotted scarf around her neck. “I don’t know what that scroll was that I found when I was cleaning out Levi’s old bedroom a couple of months ago, but I know it’s important.” She gave a very Italian shrug of her shoulders. “Why else would it be hidden?”
Why else, indeed?
“But it was not put there by Isaac. He didn’t know about Levi’s hiding spot, and even if he did, he would never have used it.” Her coral-painted mouth twisted. “You know about Isaac and Levi.”
Interesting that she hadn’t phrased that as a question. “I do.”
She nodded. “Levi didn’t put it there either. How would he have gotten hold of something like that when he was a child? And now, he is a man with his own home.”
“Yeah,” I said, more wistfully than I intended.
“You know something about this. You can help.” Oh shit. Nicola going down the path of this scroll and using it as some justification to finally escape Isaac’s clutches was dangerous.
“I’m working exclusively for an insurance company and no longer take on domestic cases.” I scribbled a phone number down on a sticky note. “I highly recommend this divorce lawyer. She can assist you in finding some way to leave—”
“It was…” Nicola pursed her lips, then sighed. “It was Adam, wasn’t it?”
“Adam?” My voice was reedy, my smile more of a grimace.
“Sì. That’s the only thing I can think of. He hid the scroll when he came to see Isaac that night. Many years ago. The last time I ever saw your father.”
My mouth fell open. “H-how?”
She smiled, the amusement lighting her face making her look so much like her son that I had to briefly look away. “Everyone always underestimates the wives and mothers, but we know more than we let on, bella.”
I tapped my pen against my thigh, my thoughts going a million miles an hour. She didn’t understand the significance of the scroll. Did she know Isaac belonged to Chariot? It was true that it would never have occurred to me to talk to her about this, but she’d lived with the man for years. She wasn’t oblivious, in the same way that Talia had known about the nurse’s complaint about my magic after my car accident, and yet that had never occurred to me, either.
“Does the word ‘Chariot’ mean anything to you?” I said.
Nicola shook her head, her brown eyes unclouded and her expression guileless. “No. Is that connected?”
“Forget you ever heard it.” It came out more harshly than I’d intended. I gentled my tone. “Please.”
“Okay, ragazza. Will you help me? I can’t live with him anymore. My son has already been so hurt and now he’s heartbroken.”
I snapped the pen in half. “That’s not relevant.”
“It is to me. That man”—her tone was laced with vitriol and her eyes darkened—“has done enough damage. To both of us. I’m done. Basta.” She slashed a hand across the top of her head.
Nicola was the picture of resolve. With or without me, she was doing this. Isaac had killed my father for leaving him, so I’d have to be very careful history didn’t repeat itself.
When it came to Chariot and betrayal, one strike and you were out. Permanently. That went double for Isaac and his abandonment issues.
Nicola was going to live a long and happy life.
Levi would hate me, but I was one of the few people who knew what Isaac was truly up to and could keep her from accidentally blundering into something that could put her life in peril. She stood a better chance of navigating this minefield with me than without me.
“I’ll help,” I said.
Her body went limp with relief and my heart ached.
“Where do you want me to start?” Generally, spouses came to me about infidelity, sometimes fraud. I was very curious how she would answer.
“Find this thing he’s so obsessed with so I can get half. I want him to know what I took from him.”
I swallowed a hysterical laugh. The only thing Isaac wanted was the four scrolls in Team Jezebel’s possession to achieve immortality, and you couldn’t exactly go halvsies on them in divorce court. Except she knew Levi had a scroll, and she didn’t mention it specifically, so what was she referring to?
She must have seen my hesitation because she leaned forward, her hands splayed on my desk. “You were looking for a clue to the same thing last night, yes? The bamah?”
“The what now?” I couldn’t even look it up since my cell and laptop were in Eleanor’s office.
“Bamah. A few days ago, I overheard a phone call. Isaac seemed to be learning about this for the first time. He got extremely agitated and has been going crazy trying to find it ever since.”
If this bamah was important to Isaac, then it had become very important to me. Especially if it was also connected to this Deepa woman.
“Do you know anything else about it?” I grabbed another pen.
“He said it was chiuso… Come se dice?” She made expansive hand gestures with her words. “Closed.”
I jotted that fact down. “It might not turn out to be anything you can use to leave Isaac,” I said, “but one way or another, I’ll get you out of that situation.” She reached for her purse but I waved her off. “No. Please. I can’t take your money.”
I’ll take your son’s. I couldn’t trust normal modes of communication to get hold of Nicola, in case Isaac had bugged her phone, so Levi would have to be the go-between. And wouldn’t that conversation be the cherry on the shit sundae of our last encounter?