Chapter 2
Five months earlier, Silvio’s wife, Claire, had died after complications from Mia’s delivery.
Since then, Lucinda had become the person everyone assumed Silvio could trust.
She stayed at the Bedford estate three nights a week.
She knew Ethan’s summer camp schedule.
She knew where Mia’s formula was stored.
She sat beside Silvio during meetings when grief made concentration feel like work performed underwater.
Grant handled security contracts for several Marchetti hotels and private properties.
Together, they had become almost impossible to separate from the machinery of Silvio’s life.
That was why the hospital questions felt worse than ordinary betrayal.
Silvio had not left his children with strangers.
He had left them with family.
Mara met him in the hospital cafeteria while Ethan slept upstairs beside a bodyguard and Mia remained under observation.
“You need to hear the ugly version,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“The SUV is registered to you.”
“I know.”
“The children were under your legal care.”
“I know.”
“And witnesses watched you hit Grant and slap Lucinda.”
“Grant swung at me.”
“That helps with Grant.”
Silvio understood the rest.
Lucinda had been walking away.
His strike against her was harder to justify.
Mara continued.
“Do not turn this into a family cleanup. We document everything.”
Silvio looked through the cafeteria window.
Outside, summer sunlight reflected off parked cars.
“Do it.”
Mara studied him.
“You’re not going to tell me to keep police out?”
“No.”
That answer cost him more than she knew.
The Marchettis had survived for generations by keeping outsiders outside.
Claire had hated that instinct.
When Ethan woke, he asked for crackers.
Silvio opened the packet himself.
The boy ate two.
Then stopped.
“Is Aunt Lucy mad at me?”
Silvio sat beside the bed.
“No.”
“She looked mad.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ethan picked at one corner of the wrapper.
“I wasn’t only asking for food.”
Silvio waited.
“I was going to find you.”
“Why?”
Ethan looked toward the closed hospital-room door.
“Because Uncle Grant said you weren’t going to be boss anymore.”
Silvio did not move.
“What exactly did he say?”
“He said after today everybody would see you can’t take care of anything.”
Mara, standing near the window, slowly lowered her phone.
Silvio felt the entire day rearrange itself.
May you like
Grant had not merely endangered his children.
He had been talking about what would happen afterward.
