Chapter 14
Victor Bellandi had disappeared before Nico was old enough to remember him.
Family story:
A gambling debt.
A rival crew.
A body dumped somewhere no Bellandi ever found.
Arthur? No, different universe. Keep.
Celia had never questioned it publicly.
Privately, Salvatore told her Victor fled after trying to steal family power.
Marco knew only the dead version.
Jonah barely knew the name.
But Celia recognized the voice.
“You’re sure?” Nico asked.
“No.”
She corrected herself.
“I believe it is him.”
Vera nodded.
The family was finally learning to separate belief from fact.
“What did Victor want?” Marco asked.
“Salvatore’s place.”
“When?”
“Before you were born.”
Celia looked toward Nico.
“Victor believed he should lead because he was older.”
“Was he?”
“By eleven months.”
Marco almost laughed.
Two brothers separated by less than a year.
One family throne.
Old story.
Celia continued.
“Your grandfather chose Salvatore.”
“Why?”
“Victor was too hungry.”
Vera looked around the courtyard.
“That has never stopped this family before.”
Celia almost smiled.
Victor supposedly tried to build his own faction.
Salvatore broke it.
Then Victor disappeared.
If alive, he had spent three decades watching.
Waiting.
Maybe Peter March was not the final Laurel.
Maybe Peter believed he was controlling the hidden system while an older Bellandi used him.
Again, layers.
Vera hated the pattern.
Nico looked at Marco.
“Did you ever hear Victor’s name during exile?”
Marco thought.
“Once.”
Everyone turned.
“A man visited me seven years after I left.”
“Who?”
“Never gave a name.”
“What did he say?”
Marco remembered.
“Family trees grow best when branches are cut.”
Celia closed her eyes.
“Victor.”
It was a phrase Salvatore mocked him for using when they were young.
Marco had forgotten.
Now it mattered.
“What did he want?” Vera asked.
“He offered me the family.”
Nico’s expression darkened.
“If you killed me?”
Marco looked at him.
“Yes.”
Silence.
“And?”
“I broke his nose.”
Nico stared.
Marco shrugged.
“You were annoying, not disposable.”
For one moment, Nico laughed.
Real.
Then the weight returned.
Marco continued.
“The man told me someday Nico would weaken the Bellandis by letting outsiders into the house.”
Everyone looked toward Vera.
Victor had predicted or feared exactly what happened.
Not because he knew Vera.
Because he hated change.
“He built Peter’s Laurel around restoring blood rule,” Vera said.
Marco nodded.
“Likely.”
“And Peter thought he was the leader.”
“Yes.”
Nico looked toward the old house.
“Where is Victor?”
Nobody knew.
Then Anna approached.
She had been listening from the doorway.
“I might.”
Everyone turned.
For twenty-eight years she had watched people entering Celia’s world.
One man came only twice.
Never gave his name.
Always arrived when Celia was away.
He met Salvatore privately once.
Later Peter once.
Older.
Walked with a slight drag in his right foot.
“Why didn’t you mention him?”
“I thought he was another Bellandi ghost.”
“Description?”
Anna gave it.
Celia went pale again.
Victor had injured his right leg in a horse accident at seventeen.
“Last time?” Nico asked.
Anna thought.
“Four years ago.”
“What happened?”
“He met Peter in the garden.”
“Did you hear them?”
“Part.”
The older man said:
“The wife is still outside the room.”
Peter answered:
“Not forever.”
Four years ago.
Vera had just married Nico.
Before her council chair.
Before the current conflict.
Victor—or someone Anna believed might be Victor—had considered Vera relevant from the beginning.
“Why?” Vera asked.
Anna looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
Vera hated that answer.
But accepted it.
Nico said:
“You stay at the estate.”
Vera looked at him.
He corrected immediately.
“I would like you at the estate while we find Victor.”
“No.”
Nico sighed.
“Worth trying.”
Marco almost smiled.
Vera stepped closer.
“If Victor watched me from the marriage onward, he had a reason.”
Celia frowned.
“What reason?”
Vera touched her wedding ring.
The only Bellandi symbol she wore regularly before joining the council.
Nico gave it to her.
Family ring.
Old.
It belonged to his grandmother before Celia.
Celia stared at it.
Then stood.
“Take it off.”
Vera’s expression hardened.
Celia stopped.
“Please.”
Different.
Vera removed the ring.
Celia held out her palm.
Vera placed it there.
Celia turned the ring under the light.
On the inside was a tiny engraved mark Vera had always assumed decorative.
A crescent crossed by a vertical line.
Marco saw it.
His face changed.
“What?”
He took the ring.
“That isn’t Bellandi.”
Nico frowned.
“Whose?”
Marco looked toward Celia.
She did not know.
Anna did.
“March.”
Everyone turned.
“That was Peter’s private mark.”
Vera stared at her wedding ring.
“How did Peter’s mark get inside Nico’s grandmother’s ring?”
Nobody answered.
Nico looked at Celia.
“Where did you get it?”
“Salvatore gave it to me.”
“When?”
“After his mother died.”
“Was it hers?”
“He said it was.”
Maybe another lie.
Marco examined the inside.
“This mark is older than Vera’s marriage.”
Anna nodded.
Vera felt cold.
The ring had connected Peter March to the Bellandis before she ever arrived.
“Maybe Peter owned it,” Jonah said.
Celia shook her head.
“No.”
She remembered something.
Salvatore’s mother, Elena Bellandi, had a younger sister.
She disappeared at nineteen.
Family shame.
Never discussed.
Her name?
Margaret March.
Anna went completely still.
“Peter’s mother.”
Silence.
Peter March had Bellandi blood.
Cousin to Salvatore.
Victor.
Part of the same generation.
The Laurel was not an outside infection.
It had been a family branch fighting for recognition for decades.
Vera looked at Nico.
“That is why Peter cared about the chair.”
Not only power.
Inheritance.
Resentment.
A branch the Bellandis refused to acknowledge had created a shadow throne.
Marco laughed bitterly.
“All this because old men could not admit who belonged to the family.”
Celia stared at Vera’s ring.
Then the front gate alarm sounded.
A single vehicle approached.
No authorization.
No convoy.
An old black sedan stopped outside the ruined house.
Nico’s men surrounded it.
The rear door opened.
An elderly man stepped out with a cane.
Right leg dragging.
Celia whispered:
“Victor.”
He looked toward the courtyard.
Eighty years old.
Thin.
Alive.
He smiled when he saw Nico.
Then Marco.
Then Vera.
His eyes remained on her longest.
“Good.”
Vera’s skin went cold.
Victor continued:
“The right wife survived the first cut.”
Celia looked at Vera’s hair.
Nico stepped forward.
“What do you want?”
Victor smiled.
“What every Bellandi man has wanted since the beginning.”
May you like
He looked at the nine-chair room behind them.
“To decide who belongs.”
