Chapter 11 - BENEATH THE WOMAN WHO NEVER DIES
They returned before dawn.
Ruby slept upstairs.
Evelyn refused to leave Claudia’s side.
Alessio allowed her to watch from the greenhouse steps while men moved the old marble statue.
It took ropes and six men.
Beneath the base was a stone cavity.
Inside sat a metal cylinder wrapped in oilcloth.
No documents.
No ledger.
No legal salvation.
Just one object.
A knife.
Short blade.
Dark wooden handle.
Ventresca crest near the guard.
Alessio recognized it.
His father’s.
Old Salvatore Ventresca carried that knife for thirty years.
After his death, it disappeared.
Alessio assumed one of his father’s soldiers took it.
Damian stared.
“Why would Thomas hide this?”
Claudia unwrapped the handle.
A second symbol had been carved beneath the crest.
A small flower.
Not a thorn.
A rose growing from a skull.
Damian whispered, “Gardener.”
Alessio turned the blade.
Dried discoloration remained near the guard.
Old blood.
No one spoke.
Claudia found a narrow groove in the handle.
Something was hidden inside.
She removed a tiny metal strip.
Engraved letters.
S.V.
Alessio’s face hardened.
“Salvatore Ventresca.”
His father.
Claudia shook her head.
“No.”
“What?”
“Thomas wouldn’t hide your father’s initials as if they were a revelation. Everyone knew the knife belonged to him.”
She turned the strip.
On the other side:
D.V.
Damian Vale.
Everyone looked at him.
Damian went completely still.
Claudia stepped backward.
Alessio did not.
“D.V.”
Damian’s voice was quiet.
“I see it.”
“Your initials.”
“Yes.”
“Explain.”
“I can’t.”
One bodyguard shifted.
Damian noticed.
He removed his weapon slowly and placed it on the ground.
“I’m not running.”
Alessio stared at him.
“Did Salvatore give you this knife?”
“No.”
“Did Thomas?”
“No.”
“Serena?”
“No.”
“Then why your initials?”
“I don’t know.”
Claudia laughed bitterly.
“That is becoming a very popular answer.”
Damian looked at Alessio.
“Do what you need.”
That almost made Alessio angrier.
“No.”
Damian frowned.
Alessio remembered Serena.
Do not trust the obvious enemy.
The evidence was too perfect.
A weapon belonging to his father.
Hidden by Thomas.
Damian’s initials.
Exactly enough to make Alessio kill the man standing at his right hand.
Predictable.
Again.
Alessio picked up the knife.
“What was your father’s name?”
Damian’s expression changed.
“Why?”
“Answer.”
“Dominic Vale.”
D.V.
Claudia stared.
Alessio continued.
“What did Dominic do?”
Damian looked toward the garden.
“He worked for Salvatore.”
“How close?”
“Closer than I liked.”
“Choir?”
“No.”
“Gabriel?”
“No.”
“What?”
Damian’s voice lowered.
“He maintained the estate.”
Silence.
Claudia understood first.
“Gardener.”
Damian closed his eyes.
“My father was the head groundskeeper.”
The word changed meaning.
Not symbolic.
Not originally.
The Gardener might have begun as a literal man.
Dominic Vale had access to every path.
Every gate.
Every greenhouse.
Every tunnel.
He could enter homes without suspicion because he worked in them.
Damian whispered:
“He died fifteen years ago.”
“Body?” Alessio asked.
“Yes.”
“You saw it?”
“I buried him.”
“Cause?”
“Stroke.”
“Any reason to doubt it?”
“No.”
Alessio looked at the knife.
S.V.
D.V.
Salvatore Ventresca.
Dominic Vale.
Perhaps not initials naming one culprit.
Perhaps a partnership.
Damian’s face had gone pale.
“My father hated Gabriel.”
“Why?”
“He said Gabriel would destroy the family.”
“Did he work the warehouse?”
Damian’s eyes lifted.
“Yes.”
Alessio felt the past shift again.
“What night?”
“The fire.”
Claudia whispered, “Oh God.”
Damian looked sick.
“I was twenty-three. Father came home burned on one arm.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Accident.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wanted to.”
There it was again.
Wanting.
The quiet accomplice to every family lie.
Alessio stared at the old blade.
Dominic Vale may have helped Salvatore try to kill Gabriel.
But Dominic had supposedly died years before Serena began investigating.
Unless the Gardener title passed the same way influence passed.
Father to son.
Damian saw the thought.
“No.”
Alessio did not accuse him.
Damian continued.
“I never became him.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“Yes.”
That honesty stopped both men.
Then Ruby’s voice came from behind them.
“Daddy?”
Alessio turned.
She stood in the greenhouse doorway holding her cardigan.
The nanny hurried behind her.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ventresca. She woke up.”
Ruby looked toward the knife.
Then toward Damian.
“Uncle Damian.”
Damian crouched instinctively.
“Hey, little flower.”
Ruby pointed at the knife.
“Mommy had that.”
Every adult froze.
Alessio walked toward her.
“When?”
Ruby thought.
“Garden night.”
“What garden night?”
She shrugged.
“Mommy cried.”
Alessio stopped.
Ruby looked at Damian.
“You were there too.”
Claudia stared at him.
Alessio slowly turned.
Damian’s face had become white.
Not because Ruby had accused him.
Because he remembered.
“She saw us.”
Alessio’s voice dropped.
“What happened that night?”
Damian looked toward Serena’s greenhouse.
May you like
“The night before she died.”
And for eleven months, he had never told Alessio he had seen Serena at all.
