Chapter 3
The decanter went to our private physician.
Not a public lab.
Not police.
Not anyone outside the family.
I wanted one answer.
Was the wine safe?
While we waited, I moved Clara into my study with Salvatore and her nanny.
She refused to let me leave.
I sat beside her.
“You’re staying?”
She nodded.
“Okay.”
No argument.
I sent everyone else out except Salvatore.
Then I asked:
“What else did Aunt Katherine say?”
Clara traced one finger across my signet ring.
“She said girls don’t sit in Boss chair.”
My jaw tightened.
Of course.
There it was.
The old poison beneath the new one.
Katherine came from the generation that believed the family belonged to men and women survived by marrying near power.
My daughter was three.
Already apparently offensive to her.
“What did she say happens to you?”
Clara looked down.
“I go away.”
“Where?”
“With nuns.”
I froze.
St. Cecilia’s.
An old private school in the mountains, originally used generations ago to hide daughters during family wars.
Nobody had sent a D’Angelo child there in twenty years.
Nobody except Katherine still talked about it.
I looked at Salvatore.
He understood.
“She planned to remove Clara.”
He nodded slowly.
I stood.
The plan was bigger now.
I become ill.
Marcus takes temporary control.
Clara gets moved “for safety.”
Distance.
Isolation.
Then if I recover, every important relationship around me has already shifted.
And if I do not—
my daughter grows up nowhere near the family she might one day challenge.
The physician called.
I answered.
“Tell me.”
His voice was careful.
“Do not drink the wine.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Would it kill me?”
“I can’t say that from what I have.”
Good.
No exaggeration.
“What would it do?”
“Make you very ill. Confused. Weak. Possibly unconscious.”
Enough.
Exactly enough.
Not a clean murder.
A public collapse.
A temporary vacuum.
I ended the call.
Salvatore watched me.
Clara looked between us.
“Daddy sick?”
“No.”
I crouched beside her.
“Because you told me.”
Her face softened.
That mattered.
Then I stood.
May you like
Katherine had wanted my daughter to learn she came after the men of this family.
Instead, Clara had just saved the man sitting at its head.
