Chapter 1 - The White Card and the Surveillance Room
The morning sun usually crept into the breakfast room of Corsini House like an uninvited guest trying not to make noise. It was a cavernous room with mahogany wainscoting, heavy velvet drapes that smelled faintly of dry cleaning, and an atmosphere that could freeze boiling water. On this particular morning, however, the chill wasn't coming from the weather outside. It was radiating entirely from the man sitting at the head of the fifteen-foot table.
Julian Corsini.
I placed the bone-china coffee cup on its matching saucer with a care that bordered on religious devotion. A single drop of liquid splashing over the rim could mean a reprimand; a broken cup could probably mean my kidneys. I had survived my first three weeks here by being invisible—a ghost who swept floors, dusted nineteenth-century oil paintings of scowling patriarchs, and pretended she didn't know the local police commissioner visited the back gates at 2:00 AM once a week.
Then my eyes drifted to the small, stiff piece of white cardstock resting right beside his left fork.
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It wasn't a grocery list. It wasn't a reminder to have the silver polished.
In crisp, precise fountain-pen ink, it read:
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