Chapter 6
Matteo Morelli was alive.
Tristan had discovered it eighteen months earlier.
Not because Vivienne trusted him.
Because she got careless.
A handwritten birthday card arrived for her with no return name. Tristan recognized his father’s phrasing immediately. He followed the courier the next month and found a private house two counties north.
He never went inside.
Cowardice has many forms.
His was fear disguised as patience.
“You knew your father was alive for eighteen months.”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
He looked at Vivienne.
“Because he was terrified of her too.”
She laughed.
“My dead husband is terrified of me?”
Tristan looked at his mother.
“He stayed dead.”
That shut her up.
I almost admired the accuracy.
We left before midnight.
Elena came.
I told her she did not have to.
She looked at me as if I had said something stupid.
“My son is there.”
So she sat beside me in the car.
Not close.
Not touching.
Three years do not disappear because the truth finally arrives.
Halfway there, she spoke.
“You searched for me?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Three years.”
She looked out the window.
“I searched for proof you hated me for almost as long.”
That hurt.
Not accusation.
Symmetry.
Two people trapped inside opposite lies.
I wanted to tell her what those years did to me.
It was not the time.
The house sat behind a tree line with no Morelli markings.
Tristan stopped at the gate.
“That’s it.”
I went in with four men.
Matteo opened the door himself.
Older.
Thinner.
Very much alive.
He looked at me.
Then Elena.
His face collapsed.
“Oh God.”
I stepped inside.
“Where is my son?”
He did not pretend not to understand.
That saved him from one mistake.
“He’s safe.”
Elena pushed past me.
“Where?”
Matteo closed his eyes.
“Not here.”
My jaw tightened.
“Then start talking.”
Vivienne had brought him the infant three years earlier.
Alive.
Healthy.
She told Matteo the mother had abandoned both children and Cassian could not acknowledge a son born during a succession transition without tearing the family apart.
Matteo believed part of it.
Enough.
He arranged a hidden placement.
Then discovered the truth months later.
“You found out Elena never abandoned me.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
His eyes filled.
“I confronted Vivienne.”
“What happened?”
“She reminded me why I was already dead.”
I stared.
Matteo had not disappeared voluntarily either.
Vivienne had staged his death years earlier after he threatened to expose her private control over Morelli captains.
There was a pattern now.
May you like
People who resisted Vivienne did not always die.
Sometimes they became stories.
