Chapter 3
Walter refused a chair.
Said old horsemen became useless once they sat too long.
I let him stand.
“What happened twenty-four years ago?”
He looked through the windows toward the polo field.
“Your father Vittorio was thirty-eight. Still reckless.”
That sounded right.
During a private match, one of the Carbone horses panicked after someone cut partway through a girth strap.
My father’s saddle rolled.
He fell beneath the horse.
Daniel Hart reached him first.
Dragged him clear before the animal came down.
“He saved my father.”
“Yes.”
“And the token?”
Walter pointed toward the brass disk.
“Vittorio gave it to him that night.”
The old Carbone keeper’s token.
Rare.
Not money.
Something more serious.
It meant the holder could come directly to the boss and be heard without going through captains.
My father had given one to a stable worker.
I understood immediately why certain men hated it.
“Then why was Daniel expelled?”
Walter’s face hardened.
“Because Enzo Carbone called him a thief.”
Ramona and Marcus’s father.
Dead twelve years.
Of course.
“What supposedly happened?”
A month after the riding accident, my grandfather’s black horse-head brooch vanished from the club.
It appeared inside Daniel’s locker.
Too neat.
Even I knew that.
“Did you believe he stole it?”
“No.”
“Did my father?”
Walter hesitated.
That mattered.
“Not at first.”
I leaned back.
“What changed?”
“Enzo.”
My father’s cousin told him Daniel had been spreading stories about sabotage.
Claiming the saddle strap had been cut intentionally.
My body became still.
“So Daniel believed someone tried to kill my father.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Walter looked toward the terrace where Marcus and Ramona waited.
“Enzo.”
Silence.
There it was.
The old story beneath the current one.
Daniel saved Vittorio.
Then accused Enzo.
Soon after, evidence appeared making Daniel look like a thief.
His token vanished.
His family was thrown off Carbone property.
His name became dirt.
I looked at Alina.
“How old were you?”
“Seven when he died.”
Walter shook his head.
“She was five when they forced him out.”
Alina closed her eyes.
Memory.
I could see it.
“What happened to him afterward?”
“Whatever work he could find,” she said. “He drank more. Got sick. Died two years later.”
Ramona had called Alina cheap blood.
Her branch had apparently helped make it cheap.
I looked at Walter.
“Why hide the token?”
“Daniel came back once.”
“When?”
“Night before he left Connecticut.”
“He hid it?”
Walter nodded.
“He told me if a Carbone ever married his daughter, God had a sense of humor.”
Alina laughed through tears.
Even I almost smiled.
Then Walter’s face became serious.
“He also said the token was not the important thing.”
I looked at him.
“What was?”
May you like
Walter pointed toward the polo field.
“Whatever Enzo was afraid Daniel saw the night that girth strap was cut.”
