Chapter 4
Laura had another piece Vincent did not know.
She had been planning to move.
Not out of Illinois.
Out of the Moretti estate.
For almost a year, Laura and the children had occupied a private wing because security was easier after her divorce and later after Emma’s adoption was finalized.
But Laura increasingly hated raising her children inside the center of family business.
Men in suits came at midnight.
Conversations stopped when children entered rooms.
Bodyguards were everywhere.
David had begun noticing which adults were feared.
Emma was still young enough to think security men simply came with the house.
Laura wanted something ordinary.
A neighborhood.
A backyard.
A school bus.
Vincent knew she had complained about estate life.
He had not realized she was already looking at houses.
“I was going to tell you after I found one,” Laura said.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Who else knows?”
“My realtor. David.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed.
“Margaret?”
“I never told her.”
David had.
He admitted it that evening.
Not because Margaret manipulated it out of him.
Because he mentioned casually during lunch that his mother was looking at houses near Glenview.
Margaret became strangely serious.
“She asked whether I wanted to go.”
“What did you say?” Laura asked.
“I said I didn’t know.”
That answer had apparently opened another door.
Margaret began describing the estate as David’s real home.
She reminded him that generations of Moretti men had grown up around family operations.
She told him Laura had become uncomfortable with “who she was.”
David did not understand what that meant.
Vincent did.
Margaret believed Laura was taking the biological grandson away.
Emma’s adoption had made the issue more emotionally charged.
In Margaret’s worldview, Laura had added an outsider and then planned to remove a blood heir.
It did not matter that Emma was legally and emotionally Laura’s daughter.
Margaret was counting lineage.
Vincent stopped himself from jumping to the obvious conclusion.
Prejudice explained Margaret’s cruelty.
It did not yet explain the banquet.
Why publicly humiliate Emma in front of dozens of witnesses?
Why move David’s seat?
Why make sure he sat beside Vincent?
Why insist his chair remain even if Laura moved?
Those choices suggested something more deliberate than anger.
May you like
The question was not simply why Margaret hated Emma’s place in the family.
It was why she needed David watching when she proved it.
