Chapter 3
Vera cut the rest of her hair herself.
Not all of it.
Only enough to remove the obvious violence from Celia’s work.
She stood in front of the bathroom mirror shortly after two in the morning.
Nico remained in the doorway.
He had offered to bring someone.
Vera refused.
The clippers Celia used were still downstairs.
Vera used scissors.
Every cut made the night feel more real.
Nico watched.
“I should have known.”
Vera did not look at him.
“About Marco?”
“About my mother.”
“You knew what she was.”
“I didn’t know she’d put her hands on you.”
Vera stopped cutting.
“You think that is the part I’m angry about?”
Nico’s face tightened.
“She humiliated you.”
“Yes.”
“She hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“But?”
Vera turned.
“You gave me that chair.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know it was Marco’s?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know your mother considered it sacred?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know Jonah opposed me because of the chair?”
Nico hesitated.
Vera nodded.
“There.”
“I thought it was family pride.”
“You thought.”
“Yes.”
“You did not tell me.”
“No.”
Vera placed the scissors down.
The Bellandi men had a habit of deciding which truth women could handle.
Celia did it through cruelty.
Nico did it through silence.
Different methods.
Same instinct.
“I will never sit at a table again without knowing whose ghost is underneath my chair.”
Nico accepted the words.
“Fair.”
Vera looked at him.
“What happened to Marco?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mother does.”
“Some.”
“Jonah does.”
“Some.”
“And you?”
Nico walked toward the window.
“When Marco vanished, I believed my father.”
“That D’Amato killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Did Marco hate you?”
“No.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Never.”
“Then why would he return twenty-one years later and treat me as an enemy?”
Nico did not answer.
Vera continued.
“Something changed.”
“Yes.”
“Or something we were told about him was never true.”
Nico looked at her.
That possibility hurt.
Vera noticed.
She softened only slightly.
“What was he like?”
Nico almost smiled.
“Impossible.”
“That sounds hereditary.”
“He thought rules were insults.”
“Also hereditary.”
Nico’s smile appeared for one second.
Then vanished.
“Marco was the heir.”
“Before you.”
“Yes.”
“Did he want it?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
“He changed during his last year.”
“How?”
“He started leaving meetings.”
“Why?”
“He said the family was becoming rotten.”
“What did Salvatore say?”
“That Marco had become weak.”
Vera looked toward the door.
Celia had said something similar about Vera.
Outsider.
Weakness.
Threat to ownership.
Patterns outlived people.
“What did Marco discover?”
Nico looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
“Then that’s where we begin.”
Downstairs, Jonah sat alone in the council room.
He had been told not to leave.
No locks.
No guards at the door.
He stayed anyway.
Sometimes fear was more effective when nobody needed to enforce it.
Nico and Vera entered together.
Jonah looked at her hair.
His expression changed.
“Vera…”
“Don’t apologize unless you’re prepared to explain what you helped do.”
He lowered his eyes.
“I didn’t know Celia would use the clippers.”
“You pulled my chair.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She told me Marco would see it as a challenge.”
“And you believed her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Jonah looked toward Nico.
“Because Marco already killed one Bellandi over that chair.”
Nico went still.
“Who?”
Jonah swallowed.
“My father.”
Renato Bellandi had not died when Nico remembered.
Officially he suffered a heart attack seventeen years ago.
Nico had attended the funeral.
Jonah stood beside the coffin.
“You said Marco vanished twenty-one years ago.”
“He did.”
“Then how did he kill Renato four years later?”
Jonah’s eyes filled with old hatred.
“Because he came back once.”
Celia entered behind them.
Nobody had heard her.
May you like
She answered.
“And I let him leave alive.”
