Chapter 2
Sienna refused to sit until Mila stopped crying.
Good.
Mother first.
Questions later.
I sent Sabrina and Marjorie into separate rooms under watch and had Gavin taken upstairs to the old card room.
No dramatic restraints.
No spectacle.
Doors and men were enough.
Then I stayed with Sienna.
“What happened before I came down?”
She kept rubbing her wrist where Gavin had grabbed her earlier.
“I asked why Mila’s backpack was in the SUV.”
“Then?”
“Gavin said we were leaving tonight.”
“For Colemere?”
“Yes.”
“Did you agree?”
“No.”
There.
Simple.
“He said the baby could come any day and his mother wanted us away from ‘Ferrante chaos’ when it happened.”
I almost laughed.
My estate had physicians, staff, security, and Sienna’s chosen maternity team twenty minutes away.
Colemere was two hours from the nearest major hospital in good weather.
We were in winter.
“Why would he want you there?”
Sienna shook her head.
“I asked the same thing.”
Gavin refused to explain.
Then Marjorie arrived.
Then Sabrina.
They told Sienna everything was already prepared.
A private nurse.
Food.
Rooms.
A driver.
She only needed to get into the SUV.
“When you refused?”
“Gavin grabbed me.”
Sienna looked down.
“Mila came around the car.”
“She saw him push you.”
“Yes.”
Then everything escalated.
Sabrina saw Mila.
Caught her.
Told her she misunderstood.
Mila said:
“No. Daddy pushed Mommy.”
Three years old.
Clear.
That terrified them.
Not because the child could testify in some courtroom.
I had no interest in courtrooms.
Because children repeat truth without understanding which adults need lies.
Mila would run upstairs.
Find me.
Say exactly what happened.
So Sabrina decided fear would work better than explanation.
She took the braid.
Marjorie held the child still.
That was the moment I entered.
I looked at Sienna.
“What is at Colemere?”
She rubbed her belly again.
“Gavin’s father’s room.”
That surprised me.
Gavin’s father, Thomas Cole, had been dead eleven years.
“What about it?”
Sienna looked at me.
“Before he died, he told Gavin the first Ferrante child born into Cole blood had to spend its first night there.”
I stared.
Not tradition I had ever heard.
Then:
“Why?”
She whispered:
May you like
“I never asked.”
Now I intended to.
