Chapter 1
Salvatore did not open the ledger immediately.
That surprised Edmund.
It surprised Marina more.
The blue leather book sat in the center of the desk while two bodyguards remained near the study doors.
Olivia was still behind Salvatore, one hand gripping his jacket and the other clutching her stuffed fox.
Her cheek had begun turning pink.
Salvatore crouched.
“Look at me.”
Olivia raised tear-filled eyes.
“Does your face hurt?”
She nodded.
“Anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Did he do this before?”
Her eyes moved toward Edmund.
Edmund looked away.
Salvatore noticed.
Olivia whispered, “Mom said I don’t tell him things.”
Salvatore felt the anger return.
He forced it back down.
“Okay.”
He lifted his daughter.
“You don’t have to tell him anything.”
Marina finally spoke.
“Salvatore, this has gotten out of control.”
He looked at her.
“You were searching my study.”
“We were looking for something that belongs to the family.”
“You hid it under your coat.”
Marina swallowed.
“I panicked.”
“That word is doing a lot of work.”
Edmund pushed himself upright against the fireplace.
Blood showed at the corner of his mouth.
“You don’t understand what that book contains.”
Salvatore looked at him.
“That’s why you hit a three-year-old?”
Edmund’s expression hardened.
“She knew where Gabriella kept it.”
The name changed the room.
Gabriella Mancini.
Salvatore’s wife.
Olivia’s mother.
Dead seven months.
Ovarian cancer had taken her after nearly two years of treatment.
Gabriella had spent much of her final year exhausted, medicated, and still stubbornly trying to run pieces of the Mancini Family Relief Foundation from a laptop beside her hospital bed.
Salvatore had repeatedly told her to stop working.
She repeatedly ignored him.
He looked at the ledger.
“I’ve never seen this.”
“You weren’t supposed to,” Edmund said.
Marina turned sharply toward her father.
Salvatore caught that too.
“What does that mean?”
Edmund’s mouth closed.
Olivia pressed her face into Salvatore’s shoulder.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Mom said blue book is for you when people lie.”
Nobody moved.
Salvatore looked down at her.
“When did she say that?”
“Hospital.”
Marina’s face changed.
Not grief.
Fear.
Salvatore handed Olivia to one of the female household staff waiting outside the study.
“Take her to Dr. Harris. Stay with her.”
Olivia grabbed his lapel.
“You come?”
“As soon as the doctor checks your cheek.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Once she was gone, Salvatore closed the study door himself.
Then he returned to the desk.
He opened Gabriella’s blue ledger.
The first page contained no confession.
No dramatic message.
Only dates.
Account numbers.
Initials.
Amounts.
And one line in Gabriella’s handwriting:
If the official books say I authorized these, check where I was that day.
Salvatore read it twice.
May you like
Then he looked at Edmund.
For the first time, his uncle appeared genuinely afraid.
