The journey was brief. An interlude of dense silence, broken only by the notes of a Goldberg variation playing softly. A mathematical counterpoint to the emotional chaos they were heading towards.
Elena felt the weight of Serena's gaze in the rearview mirror, but her focus was elsewhere.
On Vittorio's hand.
Resting on the gearshift. A few inches from her leg.
An anchor of stability in a world that was about to tilt.
When they arrived, there were no flashing lights or yellow tape.
Obviously.
The destination was an industrial building converted into a loft, a block of dark bricks against the night sky of Milan.
Luca's home.
The air didn't smell of recent death. It smelled of rain, smog, and that urban solitude that permeates places where people don't sleep.
They got out. The contrast was jarring: Vittorio's sartorial elegance, Elena's sharp beauty, and Serena's coldness against the anonymous gray of the concrete.
They went up to the third floor. The door was ajar.
Inside, the apartment was an exploded archive. Elena knew it, she had been in that house a thousand times. Yet today there was a different air.
Here was the reason.
A man detached himself from the wall. He wasn't in uniform, but the air was unmistakable: tired, as if he had finished his shift hours ago but couldn't manage to go home. His face dark, marked by frustration.
Curious. The man ignored Vittorio. His eyes nailed themselves immediately on her.
Rapid scan. Professional suspicion. Classification: Civilian. Threat.
"Counselor," the man boomed, voice raspy with smoke. "You are late. And I see you brought an audience."
His gaze passed from Serena, whom he knew and tolerated, to her, the absolute anomaly in that reserved context.
"Who is she? And why the hell is she here?"
The question wasn't directed at her, but at Vittorio.
Rude.
And indeed Elena remained silent.
"Andrea, meet Elena."
Vittorio's voice cut through the stale air. No hesitation, no excuses. His gaze landed on the detective like a blade.
"She is a keen observer. And her presence here is not an anomaly. It is a necessity."
She felt Vittorio's hand brush the small of her back. A light touch, but enough to push her forward. To claim her.
Elena gave a curt nod and sketched a smile, repaying the previous rudeness by ignoring the detective on purpose.
I don't forget.
Her eyes searched over Andrea's shoulders and found him. Bent over a table covered in photos, a younger figure turned abruptly.
Disheveled. Glasses hanging around his neck. The look of someone running a high fever.
Luca. There he was.
Elena saw the exact moment when Vittorio's voice, which must have reached him muffled before, turned into a trumpet blast. It had happened at the word "Elena."
She smiled.
Luca's blue eyes, shiny and restless, landed on her. And froze.
She saw the shock cross his face like a static shock.
It was obvious what was going through his head: he hadn't called her. She never answered at that hour.
Yet she was here.
With Vittorio.
Luca's gaze slid from her face to her waist. There, where the Lawyer's hand was still resting.
Elena saw Luca's jaw tighten.
That natural possessiveness had hit him like a slap.
Since when?
The question wasn't spoken, but Elena saw it screamed in his eyes. For an instant, Luca seemed to forget the corpses on the table. He saw only her, suddenly small and in danger, entering the den, his den, holding the wolf by the hand.
Luca moved. A nervous jerk, almost violent.
He wedged himself physically between her and Vittorio, breaking that invisible line, before the Lawyer could say another word that linked her to him.
"I called her, Andrea," he said.
His voice trembled slightly, but the lie came out solid. Absolute conviction.
"I need her perspective. She has been more helpful to me in the past than Vittorio has."
Pause. Gaze on Elena, then on Vittorio. A silent accusation.
"I never brought her here before because I didn't want to expose her. I didn't want to... introduce her to this filth. But tonight is different."
Elena held Luca's gaze.
The hum of the refrigerator was the only sound in that tense silence.
She looked at him. She read him.
Click. The Judge.
Liar.
Luca was lying to protect her.
He was rewriting reality live. Creating a narrative where he was the hero who called her, who legitimized her, who gave her permission to exist in that world.
He didn't understand that she didn't need his permission.
And he didn't understand that, by lying so clumsily, he was doing her a huge favor. He was building her alibi without knowing it.
If he had called her, Vittorio was just the driver.
Poor Luca. So blind. So useful.
Elena saw his eyes deepen, as if trying to absorb her, to save her from something she had no intention of abandoning.
"Andrea," Luca insisted, turning to look at him. "Elena is here to solve the problem, not to complicate it. Trust me. Her perspective is unique."
Andrea didn't fully bite.
Elena saw his grim gaze bounce from her to Vittorio, then stop on Luca.
"Unique? Or risky?"
He huffed, pointing at the scattered photos with a sharp gesture that betrayed frustration.
"These are confidential files on a serial killer, gentlemen. It's not an art opening."
What a shame, Elena thought, skimming a particularly gruesome photo on the edge of the table with her gaze. It would be a successful exhibition.
Andrea's tone meant to be a warning, but exhaustion got the better of him. Elena saw him run a hand over his face, surrendering. The resistance had collapsed not due to trust, but due to exhaustion.
"Fine. Luca, stop beating around the bush. What did you see that made you call for backup at three in the morning?"
Luca ran a hand through his messy curls.
Elena cataloged that gesture: Nervous. Unstable.
"I see the Wolf," he murmured, pointing to the wall plastered with images. "I spent the last forty-eight hours retracing the trail of the Lamb case. Six murders. Perfect. A liturgy."
He approached the central table, where chaos reigned supreme.
"And then this arrived." He pointed to a specific area of the table. "The seventh."
Elena observed his breathing become short.
"It should be the next step on the ladder. But... it jars. There is something wrong."
Luca looked at Vittorio. His eyes were wide.
Elena noted how he sought the Lawyer's gaze, not hers. He sought a logical confirmation for his emotional chaos.
"It's like a perfect symphony with a wrong note in the middle, Vittorio. There is an error in the frequency, but I can't isolate it."
He pressed his fingers to his temples, as if wanting to crush his brain to make it work.
"I'm hitting a wall. I can't become him. When I close my eyes and try to see the design... I see only noise."
Elena felt a surge of contempt mixed with pity.
Blind.
He was trying to "feel" a killer who felt nothing.
Stupid.
Elena detached herself from Vittorio's side.
Calculated slowness.
She ignored Luca. She ignored Andrea. Her eyes landed on the cluttered table, scrutinizing that chaos of images with the same surgical intensity with which she had scanned the crowd at the party.
She was looking for the anomaly. She was looking for the off-key note that the Empath heard but couldn't name.
There it was.
It was there. Screamed in the silence of the images.
Elena reached out a manicured hand.
She picked up a specific photo with the tips of her fingers, lifting it from the pile as if it were toxic waste to be examined in a laboratory.
Judge Rossi.
She looked at it.
The photo wasn't contaminated by blood. It was contaminated by something worse.
By an unforgivable aesthetic ugliness.