Chapter 2
No one left the gallery.
I closed the doors.
Not because I wanted drama.
Because frightened people make mistakes when they believe escape is still possible.
Katherine sat at the far end of the table.
Marcus sat beside her.
Two bodyguards stood behind them.
Clara remained in my arms.
Salvatore inspected the decanter without touching the rim.
He had worked beside me for seventeen years.
If there was one man in that room I trusted to think while everyone else panicked, it was him.
“This isn't from your usual case,” he said.
Katherine laughed.
“You recognize bottles now?”
Salvatore ignored her.
“So do you,” I said.
Her smile disappeared.
Every Christmas, my cellar master brought out the same twelve bottles.
Same vineyard.
Same year.
Same dark wax seal.
The decanter beside me had been filled somewhere else.
“How do you know?” Marcus asked.
I looked at him.
“Because you shouldn't need to ask.”
He went quiet.
I crouched beside Clara.
“Sweetheart.”
She wiped her face against my lapel.
“What did Aunt Katherine tell you?”
Katherine immediately spoke.
“Don't interrogate her.”
I looked up.
“No one asked you.”
Clara played with my signet ring.
“She said I can't sit there anymore.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“Uncle Marcus sits there after Christmas.”
Marcus went pale.
Several capos around the table shifted.
The chair beside mine wasn't officially anything.
We didn't need official things.
Everyone in that world understood symbols.
Clara sitting beside me meant one thing.
She belonged at my side.
Marcus sitting there would mean something else.
I looked at him.
“After Christmas?”
“She misunderstood.”
“Again?”
No answer.
Clara continued.
“Aunt Katherine said Daddy gets sleepy from red drink.”
My eyes moved toward the decanter.
Katherine stood.
“That is enough.”
Salvatore blocked her before she took two steps.
I watched my aunt.
Not my daughter.
Katherine had survived forty years around dangerous men because she knew how to hide fear.
She wasn't hiding it now.
“How long?” I asked.
Her lips tightened.
“How long have you been talking about my death in front of my child?”
“I said you work too much.”
“That isn't what she heard.”
“She is three.”
“Exactly.”
I stood.
“Three-year-olds don't invent succession plans.”
Marcus slammed one hand against the table.
“This is ridiculous.”
I turned.
“Then drink it.”
Silence.
His eyes moved toward the decanter.
I slid an empty glass toward him.
“Pour.”
He didn't move.
Katherine whispered his name.
“Marcus.”
That was all.
Not don't.
Not stop.
Just his name.
A warning.
I leaned against the table.
“You told me she misunderstood.”
He stared at me.
“So prove it.”
Marcus didn't reach for the bottle.
Salvatore looked at me.
Then at him.
May you like
And that answered the first question.
Whatever was inside that decanter, Marcus knew enough not to drink it.
