Chapter 10
The original memorandum was recovered four days later.
Three pages.
Celeste had written it eleven months before her death.
Victoria read it alone first.
Then she asked Rocco to come into the archive room.
She handed him the pages.
The first paragraph discussed museum governance.
The second recommended hiring an outside executive director.
Then came Victoria.
Victoria should lead the expanded education and family-programming committee. She understands donors, parents, and children in a way Preston does not. Her weakness is that she lets family loyalty override her judgment, but that is something structure can correct.
Victoria covered her mouth.
The photographed memo had contained only fragments.
Words had been rearranged.
The sentence about being “too personally involved with the family” came from a paragraph discussing why no Ventresca should control museum finances independently.
It was not about Victoria.
Then came Preston.
I am increasingly uncomfortable with Preston’s use of museum spaces for private commercial relationships. If we do not create clear boundaries now, he will eventually treat the institution as an extension of his own business.
Rocco read the sentence twice.
Celeste had predicted exactly what happened.
The final paragraph contained the deeper betrayal.
I believe Victoria will support these changes if I can speak with her without Preston framing every disagreement as an attack on their branch of the family.
Victoria sat down.
For three years, Preston had done precisely that.
He took a governance memo warning about himself.
Cut it apart.
Reassembled it into evidence that Celeste distrusted Victoria.
Then gave it to his sister.
Her resentment made her easier to control.
Whenever Victoria questioned his private business arrangements, Preston reminded her that Celeste had supposedly humiliated her.
Whenever she hesitated to erase Celeste’s influence, he described it as finally taking back what belonged to them.
The drummer.
The dolls.
The gallery.
Even the residential wing.
Pieces of one manufactured grievance.
Victoria began crying.
Rocco did not comfort her.
Not yet.
“You believed him.”
“Yes.”
“You also searched Elliot’s life for things to take.”
“Yes.”
“You threw a drink over my son and shoved him onto the floor.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Preston’s deception explained how her resentment began.
It did not erase what she chose to become afterward.
Then Rocco found the part that hurt him personally.
Attached to the memo was an email Celeste sent him.
Please read this when you have time. We need to talk about Preston before the museum becomes another family business.
Rocco had never replied.
He checked the date.
He had been traveling.
He forwarded it to an assistant.
The assistant archived it with museum correspondence.
Celeste had warned him too.
May you like
Victoria was not the only person Preston succeeded in using.
Rocco had simply made himself unavailable in a different way.
