Chapter 3 - THE PLATES THAT KEPT COMING BACK FULL
The estate cameras did not record private dining conversations clearly.
They did reveal patterns.
On eleven separate evenings, Lucas was removed from the family table within fifteen minutes of Antonio leaving.
Sometimes Lavinia led him away.
Sometimes Damian did.
Twice another relative carried his plate into the kitchen untouched.
Antonio watched the footage with his security chief, Paul Serrano.
“What happened after they left camera range?”
“We don’t know.”
Antonio looked at him sharply.
Paul had worked for him for twelve years.
“How did nobody tell me?”
Paul chose his answer carefully.
“We were told it was family discipline.”
“By whom?”
“Mrs. Bellaforte.”
“Lavinia isn’t your boss.”
“No.”
“Then why did you treat her like one?”
Paul looked ashamed.
“Because she said it came from the old rules.”
The old rules.
Again.
Antonio requested every employee who had witnessed Lucas being punished.
Most were afraid.
One cook finally spoke.
Lucas had sometimes been brought into the pantry and told to sit until everyone finished eating.
If he cried, Lavinia extended the punishment.
The cook had secretly given him crackers twice.
After the second time, Damian warned her she would lose her job if she interfered again.
Antonio paid her three months’ wages on the spot and told her she could leave the estate if she no longer felt safe.
She surprised him.
“I want to stay long enough to tell whoever needs to hear it.”
That answer embarrassed several people in the room.
A cook had more courage than relatives carrying the Bellaforte name.
Then she added something Antonio did not expect.
“Mrs. Bellaforte said your father used the pantry punishment on you.”
Antonio’s jaw tightened.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“She specifically said Vittorio ordered it?”
The cook nodded.
That bothered him.
Because Antonio remembered the pantry.
He remembered darkness.
Hunger.
Lavinia outside the door.
But he could not remember his father ever physically placing him there.
His father traveled constantly when Antonio was young.
Lavinia had managed the house.
The second clue was not evidence yet.
May you like
Only absence.
For the first time, Antonio wondered whether the childhood memories he had blamed on Vittorio were memories of Vittorio at all.
