Chapter 5
I had Rafe bring out the old Christmas storage trunks.
Diana laughed.
“You’re searching decorations now?”
“No.”
I looked at her.
“I’m searching anything you assumed I would never touch myself.”
That silenced her.
Marcus had spent years around the estate before his death. He fixed things. Carried crates. Helped my father with seasonal security when the family hosted large gatherings.
Men like Diana rarely notice the people doing practical work.
That makes practical people good at hiding things.
Grace remembered one detail.
“Dad hated nutcrackers.”
I almost smiled.
“Why?”
“He said they looked like men pretending to guard doors.”
Mark looked toward the toppled row Diana had crashed through.
Grace noticed.
So did I.
We checked them.
Nothing in the first.
Nothing in the second.
The third had a wooden base heavier than the others.
Rafe opened it.
Inside was an old Polaroid wrapped in wax paper.
Marcus.
Lorenzo.
And Diana’s late husband, Carlo Marzano.
All three standing beside a warehouse loading bay fourteen years earlier.
On the back, Marcus had written:
IF VITTORIO LIVES, CARLO KNOWS WHY.
Diana’s face emptied.
I stared at the photograph.
Carlo had been my older cousin and Diana’s husband.
Dead ten years now.
Officially from illness.
Mark stepped forward.
“My father had nothing to do with this.”
I looked at him.
“You know what ‘this’ is?”
He froze.
Again.
Too fast.
Diana snapped, “Stop talking.”
Mark turned toward her.
That mattered.
A crack.
Small.
But visible.
I looked at Grace.
She was staring at her father’s handwriting.
“Did he know he was going to die?”
I did not answer immediately.
Marcus had hidden a token inside a bear.
A photograph inside a Christmas decoration.
He had started leaving breadcrumbs before the night he saved me.
Men do not do that unless they expect someone may silence them.
“He knew something was wrong,” I said.
Grace’s eyes filled.
Diana rolled hers.
“Marcus loved melodrama.”
Grace looked at her.
“My father died.”
“He chose to.”
That sentence changed the room.
I stepped forward.
Diana realized it.
Too late.
“What did you just say?”
She lifted her chin.
“He put himself between a bullet and a man who outranked him. That was his choice.”
I stared.
“No.”
My voice turned quiet.
“He put himself between a bullet and me.”
Pause.
“The question is why he knew the bullet was coming.”
Diana said nothing.
And suddenly the night Marcus died looked different.
May you like
Maybe he had not simply reacted faster than everyone else.
Maybe Marcus Bennett walked into that warehouse already knowing someone inside my family planned to kill me.
