Chapter 5
Celina insisted Sterling House was unrelated to Ellie.
Rachel, her attorney, repeated the distinction.
“Financial questions do not automatically explain child mistreatment.”
Luciano agreed.
That irritated Celina more than accusation would have.
“You think everything is connected.”
“No.”
He sat across from her.
“I think you locked my daughter behind a wall. That stands by itself.”
Celina looked down.
“Why?”
“I told you. She was having a tantrum.”
“You said nobody should remember she lived here.”
Her face changed.
“Ellie misunderstood.”
“She repeated a sentence.”
“She’s three.”
Luciano’s voice cooled.
“That argument is getting tired.”
Rachel intervened.
“Celina, if there is context, give it.”
Celina took a long breath.
“She has been disrupting every event.”
Luciano said nothing.
“She runs into rooms. She speaks when adults are talking. She finds things. She goes through boxes.”
Finds things.
There.
Luciano heard it.
“What things?”
Celina realized her mistake.
“Toys. Decorations.”
“What did she find that worried you?”
“Nothing.”
He leaned forward.
“You just changed.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“Celina.”
She stared at him.
“What did Ellie see?”
Rachel advised her not to answer.
The meeting ended.
Luciano walked directly downstairs to Grant.
“Search every prior incident report involving Ellie during events.”
There were seven.
Four were meaningless.
A spilled juice pitcher.
A broken centerpiece.
A missing shoe.
Three mattered.
Six months earlier, Ellie entered the service corridor holding a bundle of colored envelopes.
Celina took them from her.
The incident report described them as “vendor place cards.”
Five months earlier, Ellie wandered into a meeting between Marianne and two senior capos in an upstairs sitting room.
She was removed by Celina.
Four months earlier, Ellie told Mrs. Parker that “Aunt Marianne gives the men birthday envelopes.”
Nobody understood what she meant.
Mrs. Parker assumed cash gifts.
Luciano did not.
He called Evelyn.
“Do any of the questionable vendors pay companies linked to capos?”
“Indirectly, yes.”
“Could the inflated invoices be moving money toward them?”
“We need more work.”
“Do it.”
He then asked Grant about the colored envelopes.
One housekeeper remembered them.
Cream envelopes with blue edges.
Not place cards.
Payment packets.
Older staff occasionally still used paper envelopes for cash reimbursements and discretionary event bonuses.
“Who issued them?”
The household office.
“Who supervised that?”
Marianne.
Luciano stared at the report.
The money question was getting closer to the child question.
May you like
Ellie had a habit of appearing where adults thought she did not belong.
Then Celina started making her disappear.
