Chapter 6
Grant had been promised the west crews.
Vanessa had been promised the estate.
Neither admitted it willingly.
They blamed each other first.
“She said the house would be mine.”
Grant pointed at Vanessa.
Vanessa laughed.
“You wanted the crews.”
“At least I admitted it.”
“You thought four starving children made you a general?”
Grant’s face reddened.
Victor watched them with disgust.
Not concern.
That mattered.
Ethan leaned against the ballroom table.
“Keep going.”
Vanessa snapped:
“Stop acting like you’re in control.”
Ethan looked at her.
She continued.
“You weren’t here.”
Four words.
Her favorite weapon.
“You don’t know what this house needed.”
“Four children needed food.”
“They needed discipline.”
“They needed heat.”
“They needed to stop being fragile.”
Ethan’s eyes hardened.
Vanessa kept going.
“Claire made them weak.”
“She died and somehow still controls every room.”
“Every bedtime.”
“Every birthday.”
“Every tantrum.”
Then:
“I was done competing with a dead woman.”
There it was.
Personal.
Not merely Victor’s plan.
Jealousy.
Ethan watched her.
“You punished them because they missed their mother.”
“I taught them to move on.”
“With hunger.”
Vanessa shrugged.
“Pain makes lessons stick.”
Several guests looked away.
Victor stepped in.
“That was never part of my instruction.”
Vanessa laughed.
Everybody turned.
“Your instruction?”
Victor froze.
Vanessa smiled bitterly.
“Now you want clean hands?”
Grant looked at Victor.
Ethan waited.
Vanessa continued.
“You told me Ethan needed to come home and see a failed household.”
Victor’s face hardened.
“I told you not to coddle them.”
“You told me the girls needed to look neglected.”
Silence.
Victor shouted:
“Enough.”
Too late.
Ethan’s expression became terrifyingly calm.
“Look neglected.”
Vanessa realized.
Still tried.
“He meant emotionally.”
Grant laughed.
“No, he didn’t.”
Victor turned toward him.
Grant smiled.
“You promised me west crews.”
“Don’t suddenly grow morals.”
The coalition cracked wider.
Ethan said:
“Why did they need to look neglected?”
Victor stayed silent.
Ethan answered for him.
“Because you needed my absence to have a face.”
Four daughters.
Thin nightgowns.
Cracked lips.
A father overseas.
Then a midnight room full of old capos.
Victor could point across the hall and say:
Look what Ethan abandoned.
Elegant.
If nobody knew Victor had engineered the neglect.
Ethan looked toward Samuel Greer.
“Did Victor promise you anything?”
The old capo shook his head.
“No.”
“What were you told?”
“That you were unstable overseas.”
“Anything else?”
Samuel hesitated.
“That Claire’s death broke you.”
Ethan’s eyes hardened.
Victor looked away.
Samuel continued.
“And that your daughters were suffering because you refused to return.”
Ethan nodded.
The lie was complete.
He had been kept overseas by false crises.
His daughters were abused to create visible suffering.
Then his absence would be blamed for it.
Thomas brought the tablet.
“There’s another file on Claire’s flash drive.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
Ethan noticed.
“What file?”
Thomas handed him the tablet.
The filename read:
FOR ETHAN — IF THEY USE MY DEATH AGAINST YOU.
Victor stopped breathing.
May you like
Claire had anticipated something.
And Vanessa already knew.
