Chapter 2
I ended the wedding.
Not dramatically.
I looked at my capos and said:
“Everyone who is not Valenti leaves.”
People moved.
Fast.
Family celebrations have a remarkable ability to become business meetings when the boss stops smiling.
I carried Livia into the private sitting room and cleaned the small cut near her knee where a porcelain edge had grazed her stocking.
She kept apologizing.
That frightened me more than the injury.
“Daddy, I didn’t mean break expensive thing.”
“I know.”
“Aunt Camilla mad.”
“I know.”
“She said I ruin things.”
I stopped.
“When?”
Livia looked toward the ballroom.
“Sometimes.”
My jaw tightened.
“How many times?”
She held up three fingers.
Maybe three.
Maybe simply a number she liked.
Children are not evidence machines.
They are children.
I did not interrogate her.
I asked one question.
“Does Aunt Camilla scare you?”
Livia nodded.
That was enough for now.
Outside, Marco shouted that I had no right to detain him.
I almost laughed.
My daughter had just been slapped for breaking an object hiding my dead father’s warning, and Marco was worried about etiquette.
Rafe Santoro, my oldest capo, stayed with Livia while I returned to the ballroom.
Camilla stood again.
Marco beside her.
I placed the brass key on the table.
“What chapel cabinet?”
Neither answered.
I smiled slightly.
“Good.”
Marco frowned.
“What?”
“If you answered quickly, I’d assume Father was wrong.”
Camilla’s eyes narrowed.
“He became paranoid near the end.”
There it was.
Attack the dead man’s mind when you cannot attack the message.
“My father died from cancer.”
“He was medicated.”
“He was still writing clear enough to predict your reaction seven years later.”
Camilla’s face hardened.
Marco interrupted.
“That key opens nothing important.”
I looked at him.
“So you know what it opens.”
Silence.
Another mistake.
I picked up the key.
The old family chapel sat behind the eastern wing of the estate.
Unused for nearly a decade.
My father had prayed there alone during the final months of his life.
Apparently he had been doing something else too.
As I turned to leave, Marco said:
“If you open that cabinet, you’ll destroy this family.”
I stopped.
“No.”
May you like
Then looked back.
“If a cabinet can destroy us, somebody already did.”
