Chapter 1
Raffaele’s first order after the doors closed was not for Preston.
It was for Ava.
“Take my granddaughter upstairs.”
Sofia immediately shook her head.
“She stays with me.”
Raffaele looked at her trembling hands.
“You’re coming too.”
He had no intention of interrogating anyone while a four-year-old watched adults threaten each other.
A trusted female staff member escorted Sofia and Ava to Raffaele’s private office above the foundry gallery.
Only after the elevator doors closed did Raffaele turn back.
Preston had managed to sit upright among the fallen plaster molds.
Grace remained near the overturned patina cart.
Neither looked shocked anymore.
They looked cornered.
Raffaele removed his jacket.
“Who was Beatrice?”
Preston laughed through a split lip.
“You know who she was.”
Raffaele did.
Beatrice Hale had been Preston’s first wife.
Five years earlier, she had died during a private arts fundraiser inside this same foundry.
The official story was simple.
Beatrice had consumed too much champagne.
She wandered onto an unfinished mezzanine.
She fell.
Sofia had also been present that night.
She was twenty-three.
She had been found unconscious in a side corridor after apparently slipping and striking her head.
For weeks afterward, Sofia remembered almost nothing between dinner and waking in the hospital.
Raffaele had accepted that.
He had been grateful his daughter survived.
Preston looked toward Grace.
Raffaele noticed.
“Why did Sofia say you keep asking what she remembers?”
Preston’s expression hardened.
“She has nightmares.”
“That wasn't my question.”
Grace stood slowly.
“Raffaele, this is becoming dangerous.”
He looked toward the wreckage around her.
“It became dangerous before I entered the room.”
Grace lowered her voice.
“Beatrice’s death was investigated.”
“So was my daughter’s injury.”
“And?”
Raffaele stared at her.
“Five years later, you just told me Sofia was never supposed to remember.”
Grace stopped speaking.
That sentence had done more damage than any confession.
Upstairs, Sofia sat with Ava asleep against her chest.
She kept hearing Preston’s words.
Beatrice begged longer than this.
Not:
Beatrice cried.
Not:
Beatrice was afraid.
May you like
Begged.
Preston had described something he could only know if he had been there close enough to hear it.
