Chapter 2
I moved Isabella upstairs.
Not into a guest room.
Into mine.
She refused every room with a lock.
I did not ask why.
Claire helped her bathe while Lily sat outside the bathroom door talking constantly about everything she had missed in six years.
Her school.
Her dolls.
A dead goldfish.
The blue dress she wore last Christmas.
My mother answered whenever she could.
Sometimes she cried.
Lily pretended not to notice.
I went downstairs.
Helena and Samuel were waiting in the private library.
Good.
I closed the door behind me.
“How many places?”
Samuel looked confused.
Helena did not.
My eyes stayed on her.
“My mother said you moved her. How many places?”
Helena folded her hands.
“She is frightened. Memory changes under pressure.”
“No.”
I took one step closer.
“Fear changes memory.”
Her expression tightened.
“It does not create rooms.”
Samuel finally spoke.
“Three.”
I turned.
Helena snapped his name.
He ignored her.
Interesting.
“Three places,” he repeated.
“The basement room. An old staff apartment in the west wing. And the country greenhouse property.”
My jaw tightened.
All Moretti property.
My mother had never been far.
“How long was she here?”
Samuel swallowed.
“Most of the last two years.”
I stared.
I had slept above her.
Held dinners above her.
Punished men for disloyalty while my own mother lived behind a locked door beneath the same roof.
Helena spoke with irritation.
“She was safer here.”
I looked at her.
“Safer from who?”
No answer.
“Me?”
Her eyes sharpened.
“From what your mother knew.”
That was finally interesting.
“What did she know?”
Samuel looked toward Helena again.
She did not allow him the answer this time.
“Your father’s last decision.”
I went still.
My father died eleven years ago.
My mother’s supposed death came five years later.
Two separate griefs.
Apparently connected.
“What decision?”
Helena smiled faintly.
“He changed the succession structure.”
I almost laughed.
“I was already head of the family.”
“Yes.”
She leaned back.
“And he regretted what that did to you.”
I stared at her.
Helena continued.
“Before he died, Antonio Moretti created a second center of family authority.”
“Who?”
She looked toward the ceiling.
Toward the room where Isabella rested.
“Your mother.”
Silence.
My father had made Isabella more than matriarch.
He had given her power equal enough to stop certain decisions.
That explained why Helena kept her alive.
Dead women cannot answer questions.
But sometimes living women are needed to unlock things dead men leave behind.
I looked at Samuel.
“What did they need from her?”
May you like
He whispered:
“Your father’s black seal.”
