The phone rang at 2:23 in the morning.
Renzo knew because he checked the time before answering. He always did. A lawyer's habit, Annalisa used to say — she had already rolled to the other side of the bed and pulled the comforter up over her ears.
"Hello."
The voice on the other end was one he didn't recognize at first. The man was talking fast, swallowing his words, and in the background there was a sound like wind, or maybe distant sirens.
"Renzo, it's Marco. Marco from the racing division. Luca's been in an accident."
He sat up on the edge of the bed. Bare feet on the cold floor. January in Maranello meant exactly that: the cold seeping through the windows even when they were shut.
"What kind of accident?"
"Car accident. On the road to Castelvetro, the one that climbs up toward the hills. The carabinieri found him. It's bad, Renzo. They took him to Baggiovara."
Renzo said nothing. The only sounds in the room were Annalisa's breathing and the ticking of the radiator. Luca. His Luca. The man who had been his best man at the wedding, the one he'd spent summers at the river with as a kid, the one who every time they ran into each other at the bar would say, "Counselor, when are you gonna sue me?" and laugh that big, wide laugh of his.
"I'm going," he said.
Annalisa turned over. "Where are you going at this hour?"
"Luca's been in an accident. I'm going to Baggiovara."
She sat up. She looked at him with those eyes he'd known for twenty years, eyes that said everything without a word. Worry, fear, and underneath it all that thing Renzo would never have admitted he needed: permission.
"Go," said Annalisa. "Call me when you get there."
He drove through the fog. The provincial road was empty, the sodium streetlights casting yellow rings in the gray, and every so often a road sign materialized out of nowhere like a ghost. Maranello at night was a town that didn't exist. Dark houses, the factory in the distance with its security lights burning, a silence that pressed down like a wet blanket.
At the hospital in Baggiovara they made him wait. A long corridor, blue plastic chairs, the hum of fluorescent lights. A nurse told him Luca was in intensive care, that the doctors were still working, that he couldn't see him.
"I'm his attorney," Renzo said, and immediately heard how stupid it sounded. As if a lawyer could do anything against head trauma.
"He's also my best friend," he added, quieter.
The nurse looked at him with an expression he'd seen a thousand times. The expression of someone who works nights in a hospital and has learned never to promise anything.
"Have a seat. I'll let you know as soon as there's news."
He sat. He waited. He stared at the ceiling, counted the tiles, stood up, walked to the vending machine, got a coffee that tasted like plastic, went back and sat down again. He thought about Luca. About that evening, three days earlier, when they'd met at their usual bar in the piazza in Maranello. Luca had been off. Not his usual wide laugh. He'd said little, kept checking his phone, and at one point had said something that now, in the hospital corridor, was rising to the surface like a stone from the bottom of a river.
*Renzo, if something ever happens to me, remember — it's never just an accident.*
Renzo had laughed. "What are you talking about? You've been watching too many movies."
Luca hadn't laughed. He'd finished his coffee, stood up, clapped Renzo on the shoulder, and walked out.
Now he was in a coma in Baggiovara, and those words weren't funny to anyone.
At five in the morning a doctor came through the glass doors. Green scrubs, tired face, hands moving as if searching for something to hold onto.
"Mr. Luca Ferretti is stable but comatose. Severe head trauma. We can't say when he'll wake up. Or if he will."
Renzo nodded. He said nothing. He left the hospital as dawn was barely breaking, a dirty gray light above the rooftops of Modena, and stood motionless in the parking lot with his keys in his hand, his breath making small clouds in the cold.
Then he called Annalisa.
"He's in a coma," he said. "They don't know if he'll wake up."
He heard his wife's silence. A silence that held everything.
"Come home, Renzo."
"I have to do something first."
"What?"
"I need to go to Vignola."
Annalisa didn't ask why. Maybe she already knew. Maybe she knew her husband well enough to understand that when he used that tone — that low, steady tone he used in court just before he dismantled a witness — there was no stopping him.
Renzo got in the car and took the road to Vignola. Twenty minutes on the provincial road between the flatlands and the first hills, the bare rows of grapevines looking like skeletons in the gray dawn light. He knew where Omar lived. Luca had mentioned it a few times, always carefully, always without saying too much. An engineer from Ducati, a sharp one, someone who understood certain things that other people couldn't even see.
He rang the doorbell at six fifteen in the morning.
Omar answered in a bathrobe. A man around fifty, lean, thick glasses, gray hair in disarray. He looked at Renzo the way you look at someone who has no business being there.
"Who are you?"
"Renzo Malaguti. I'm Luca Ferretti's lawyer. And his best friend."
Omar said nothing. He stood in the doorway with one hand on the handle, the other gripping the lapel of his bathrobe.
"Luca was in an accident last night. On the road to Castelvetro. He's in a coma at Baggiovara."
Something moved across Omar's face. Something quick, like a shadow behind glass. Then nothing. His expression went neutral again.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But I don't—"
"Luca was on his way to see you," Renzo said. "I know. He was carrying documents. Those documents were gone when they found him."
Omar was silent. A minute. Maybe two. Time stretched out in the cold of the morning, in the vapor of their breath, in the sound of a blackbird singing somewhere in the garden.
Then he spoke.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
But he said it the wrong way. He said it like someone who knows exactly what you're talking about and has decided not to tell you. Renzo had spent fifteen years in courtrooms. He knew how to recognize a lie. And that was a lie.
"Omar," he said, and took a step forward. "My friend is in a coma. Someone took something from him. If you know anything and you're not telling me, I'll find another way to ask. And you won't like it."
Omar looked at him. In the engineer's eyes there was something Renzo hadn't expected. Not guilt. Not defiance.
Fear.
"I can't help you," Omar said. And closed the door.
Renzo stood on the step. The blackbird had gone quiet. Somewhere beyond the rooftops of Vignola, the sun was trying to break through the fog and failing.
He went back to the car. Sat down. Didn't start the engine.
He picked up his phone and found Luca's number in his contacts. No one answered, of course. But Renzo looked at the recent calls Luca had made. There was one, two days before the accident. Duration: forty-seven seconds. Luca had called and said only one thing.
*Keep your eyes open, counselor. Things are moving.*
Renzo started the engine. He took the road back to Maranello.
Things were moving. And he had no intention of standing still.