Chapter 2
Matteo removed both of them from the main house that night.
He did not throw Helena onto the street.
She still owned her own residence twenty minutes away.
Dominic had a townhouse in Chicago.
They were escorted there separately, and neither was allowed direct contact with Ava.
Helena called Matteo seventeen times before midnight.
He answered none of them.
Dominic called once.
Matteo answered that one.
“I want to explain.”
“Tomorrow.”
“You need to hear it tonight.”
“Why?”
Silence.
Then Dominic said, “Because your mother is going to decide what version you hear first.”
That was the first useful thing he had said.
“Then start talking.”
Dominic hesitated.
“I knew she was practicing with Ava.”
“Practicing what?”
“What happens if you’re unavailable.”
“Unavailable how?”
“She never gave me one answer.”
Matteo leaned back in his office chair.
“You accepted my daughter calling you Daddy without asking why?”
“I told Helena it was insane.”
“But you participated.”
Dominic did not deny it.
“She said Ava needed to be comfortable with me.”
“For what?”
Another hesitation.
“If something happened.”
Matteo’s voice became quieter.
“Something happened to me?”
“Yes.”
“An accident?”
“I don’t know.”
“Prison?”
Dominic stopped breathing normally.
Matteo noticed.
There it was.
“Prison,” Matteo repeated.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Dominic insisted Helena had described everything as contingency planning.
Matteo had enemies.
Federal investigations came and went.
Family leadership could not become unstable every time somebody was indicted.
Matteo listened.
Then asked the only question that mattered.
“Why did you try to leave the dining room?”
Dominic was silent long enough to answer.
Finally he said, “Because I knew how it looked.”
“No.”
Matteo stared at the dark window.
“You knew Ava had just said something she was never supposed to say.”
Dominic said nothing.
Matteo ended the call.
The next morning, he began with the house.
Staff were interviewed individually.
No threats.
No group meetings.
No opportunity to coordinate stories.
By noon, one nanny remembered Helena taking Ava into the library several times during the previous two months.
Dominic had attended at least three of those visits.
Another employee had been told not to enter.
A third remembered seeing a woman she did not recognize arrive carrying a child-development workbook.
Matteo asked security for the visitor records.
The woman’s name was Eleanor Price.
May you like
Her profession was listed as child-development consultant.
Matteo had never hired her.
