Chapter 5
Leonard did not answer his phone.
Neither did the two men who went with him.
Rocco cursed once.
Quietly.
August watched from the chair.
“You see?”
Rocco turned.
“What?”
“You don’t know your own house.”
“Neither did my father.”
August smiled faintly.
“You always hated when someone compared you to Carlo.”
“Because he was better at pretending certainty.”
August’s expression hardened.
Rocco walked toward him.
“Why Matteo?”
His uncle said nothing.
“Not Thomas.”
“Not Bianca.”
“Matteo.”
Rocco’s younger brother had been twenty-seven.
Popular.
Restless.
Too charismatic for August’s comfort.
“Did he discover you wanted the chair?”
August looked toward the fire.
“He discovered something.”
“What?”
“No.”
Rocco almost smiled.
“Still bargaining.”
“I know what Leonard is.”
That got attention.
“What?”
August leaned back.
“More dangerous than me.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted control of the Bellacorte family.”
“And Leonard?”
August looked at him.
“Wants the family gone.”
Rocco stared.
August continued.
“Leonard’s father was your father’s younger brother.”
“I know my own uncle.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“Heart attack.”
August smiled.
“There are those family stories again.”
Rocco’s jaw tightened.
“Speak.”
“Carlo had him killed.”
Silence.
“Why?”
“He planned to split the family.”
“Proof?”
“Matteo found it years later.”
Rocco’s face changed.
August continued.
“That is what Matteo discovered.”
“Not your money.”
“That too.”
“But?”
“He discovered your father ordered his uncle’s death.”
“And Leonard?”
“Learned eventually.”
Rocco looked toward the doorway.
His cousin had spent decades sitting at his table.
Never challenging.
Never ambitious.
Perhaps because ambition was not the goal.
Revenge was.
“Did you recruit Leonard?”
August laughed.
“I tried.”
“He refused?”
“He agreed just enough to make me think he was mine.”
Rocco understood.
Two conspiracies.
August wanted to replace Rocco.
Leonard wanted both branches destroyed.
“And Bianca?”
August looked at her.
“She was supposed to make Rocco weak.”
Bianca’s face hardened.
August continued.
“A man betrayed by his wife becomes careless.”
“You expected me to betray him publicly?”
“Yes.”
“To humiliate Noah?”
“No.”
Bianca looked away.
That part was hers.
Good.
The story would not absolve her by moving blame upward.
Rocco noticed.
“So that was your choice.”
“Yes.”
Bianca’s answer barely carried.
Rocco nodded.
“Remember that.”
She looked at him.
“You remembered yours?”
Thomas.
Rocco accepted the blade.
“Yes.”
Silence.
Maria returned upstairs to Noah.
Rocco followed a few minutes later.
The boy sat on the bed in clean pajamas.
Clara, the dismissed nanny, sat near the door.
Twenty-nine.
Shaken.
Rocco crouched in front of Noah.
“You hungry?”
Noah looked uncertain.
“Bianca said no dinner.”
Rocco’s face changed.
Maria placed a small plate beside him.
“You eat whenever you are hungry.”
Noah looked at Rocco.
“Even if I drop coats?”
Rocco swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Even two?”
“Yes.”
“Three?”
“Especially three.”
Noah smiled slightly.
Rocco kissed his forehead.
Then went into the hall with Clara.
“You saw Leonard?”
“I think so.”
“Think?”
“He wore the cufflinks.”
“Face?”
“No.”
“What did he say to Bianca?”
Clara hesitated.
“I heard only part.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘After the ring goes on, the boy goes below and the house opens.’”
Rocco frowned.
“The house opens.”
Clara nodded.
“Bianca told him she wasn’t hurting Noah.”
Bianca had lied.
Or changed later.
“What did he answer?”
Clara’s eyes lowered.
“He said, ‘You don’t have to hurt him. Just teach Rocco what fear feels like.’”
Rocco stared toward Noah’s door.
There it was.
Noah was not intended to die.
He was intended to alter Rocco.
A frightened father was easier to move.
Just as a grieving brother had been twenty-two years ago.
The same weapon.
Different child.
Rocco’s voice became cold.
“What house opens?”
Clara shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Maria, standing nearby, did.
“The old council chamber.”
Rocco turned.
“What?”
Maria looked toward the east wing.
“Your father sealed it after Matteo died.”
Rocco remembered.
A stone room beneath the estate.
Old Bellacorte bosses had used it before Rocco was born.
“No one has access.”
Maria looked at him.
“Your wife did.”
Rocco froze.
“Elena?”
Noah’s mother.
Dead three years.
Maria nodded.
“She found a second entrance.”
Rocco’s breathing changed.
“When?”
“Two weeks before she died.”
Silence.
Rocco stared.
Elena’s car had left the road during a storm.
He had believed it was an accident.
August lowered his head when Rocco later confronted him about it.
Leonard had delivered the news that night.
And suddenly Rocco understood why Leonard needed Bianca to become mistress of the house.
Not merely for Noah.
May you like
Marriage would give her access to Elena’s rooms.
To whatever Elena had found before dying.
