Chapter 2
I moved Grace and Maya into the private sitting room beside the ballroom.
Maya refused to let go of the bear.
I did not ask her to.
Instead, I sat across from Grace while one of my housekeepers brought ice for the swelling on her cheek.
“You knew who I was.”
Grace nodded.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Two years.”
“And you never told me Marcus was your father.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Her eyes moved toward the door.
Toward Diana.
That was answer enough to make my jaw tighten.
Grace noticed.
“She told me if I used my father’s name, I’d lose the job.”
I stared.
“A housekeeping job.”
Grace almost smiled.
“For you, yes.”
Then she looked at Maya.
“For me, it was the room above the service wing, food, health care, school waiting list.”
Diana had not simply threatened employment.
She had made survival sound conditional.
Exactly the sort of cruelty people disguise as practicality.
“What else did she say?”
Grace hesitated.
Maya answered from the sofa.
“Aunt Diana says Grandpa was a loser.”
Grace closed her eyes.
I went completely still.
“Maya.”
The child looked worried.
Grace touched her arm.
“It’s okay.”
I looked at her.
“No. It isn’t.”
Grace finally spoke.
“Diana said my father died because men like him confuse loyalty with importance.”
I stared at the door.
Marcus Bennett had taken three bullets meant for me outside a warehouse fourteen years earlier.
He died before sunrise.
My last words to him were a promise.
Your family is mine now.
I had believed the Bennett family moved away before I could fulfill it.
Now Marcus’s daughter was cleaning my estate.
His granddaughter wore secondhand shoes at my Christmas gala.
And Diana had been teaching the child to despise the man who saved my life.
I looked at the teddy bear.
“What’s under the patch?”
Grace shook her head.
“I honestly don’t know.”
Maya frowned.
“Grandpa put something.”
Grace looked at her.
“Maya, Grandpa died before you were born.”
The child shook her head firmly.
“Mommy said Grandpa made Bear.”
Grace’s expression changed.
She had told Maya stories.
Not details.
I crouched beside the child.
“Can I look?”
Maya hugged the bear tighter.
Then she studied my face.
“Will you hurt him?”
“No.”
She thought about that.
Then held the bear out.
I carefully lifted the edge of the blue patch.
Something thin rested beneath it.
Metal.
Small.
A Marzano family token.
Marcus had sewn one of my family’s old loyalty markers inside a toy meant for his daughter.
May you like
And scratched across the back were three words:
VITTORIO OWES ME.
