Chapter 2
Rocco’s message remained on my screen long after the words stopped making sense.
You need to see this before tonight.
I looked across the sitting room at Vivien.
She was standing beside the tall windows, watching the gardeners prepare the terrace for dinner. The late afternoon sun touched her hair, turning it almost silver at the edges. She looked composed, elegant, entirely at home in my house.
My house.
The place where she had spent three months quietly reshaping everyone’s lives.
Elena was gone from the hallway. Mia had been taken to the nursery by Mrs. Bell, the older housekeeper who had worked for my family since I was a boy. My mother remained upstairs, and I could not stop thinking about the way her fingers had struck the armrest.
Not random trembling.
A signal.
A warning.
“Darling?” Vivien turned from the window. “You’re staring at your phone as though it has offended you.”
I slipped it into my pocket.
“Business.”
“Always business.” She smiled. “You promised me one peaceful evening.”
“I remember.”
“Tonight matters, Lorenzo. Your mother is finally going to join us for dinner, isn’t she?”
The question sounded innocent, but I heard the calculation beneath it.
My mother had not eaten with us in weeks. Vivien had told me Isabella became tired easily and preferred the quiet of her room. Whenever I suggested visiting her, Vivien seemed to appear first with a fresh cup of tea, a medical update, or some urgent reason not to disturb her.
I had accepted every explanation.
That realization settled inside me with a weight I could not name.
“Mother may not be feeling well,” I said.
Vivien’s smile held.
“She should make an effort. This is our engagement dinner.”
“Our engagement dinner?”
She crossed the room and touched my sleeve.
“I thought we agreed to celebrate with the family before making the announcement.”
“We agreed to have dinner.”
“Of course.” Her fingers tightened lightly around my arm. “But surely you haven’t changed your mind about us?”
There it was.
Not anger. Not fear.
A question carefully shaped to make any answer sound like betrayal.
I studied her face. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you’ve been distant.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’re always busy. This is different.”
For one brief second, something unguarded passed through her expression. It looked less like guilt than worry.
Then it disappeared.
I wondered whether I had misjudged her entirely.
Perhaps there was an explanation for what I had heard. Perhaps she had been trying to protect someone from a misunderstanding. Perhaps the words had sounded worse because I had heard only part of the conversation.
But Mia’s small hand had led me to that door.
And Elena had not looked surprised when Vivien threatened her.
“Go upstairs and rest,” I told Vivien. “I need to make a few calls.”
Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
“About the dinner?”
“About business.”
She leaned closer and kissed my cheek.
“Don’t be too long.”
I watched her leave the room.
Only after the front doors closed behind her did I allow myself to breathe.
Rocco was waiting in the private garage, beside a dark sedan with its engine running. He had worked for me for eleven years, but he had never looked as serious as he did that afternoon.
He held a slim brown folder in one hand.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“Before I explain, you should know that I had the estate’s security system copied by an outside technician. No one connected to this house had access to the files.”
“Good.”
“And I checked the financial records through three separate channels.”
“Rocco.”
He looked at me.
“This isn’t about a missing payment or some gossip from the staff.”
“I know.”
May you like
“Then tell me.”
He opened the folder.
