Chapter 3
Claire Bellucci arrived at Julia’s office the following morning with her own attorney.
She did not greet Carmine warmly.
She placed a folder on the table.
“You need to see what I’ve been receiving.”
Inside were photographs.
Leo asleep on a bench outside the service kitchen.
Leo carrying a bucket nearly half his size.
Leo standing beside Helena’s car wearing stained clothes.
Leo eating alone on a back staircase.
None showed overt violence.
That made them worse in a different way.
They looked like neglect.
Carmine turned one over.
“Where did these come from?”
“Anonymous emails.”
“When?”
“First one six weeks ago.”
Carmine stared at her.
“You never told me.”
Claire’s eyes flashed.
“I did.”
“No.”
“I called you the night I got the second email.”
Carmine remembered the call.
She had said Leo looked exhausted after his weekend at the estate.
He assumed she was criticizing his parenting again.
“You didn’t mention photographs.”
“I tried.”
“You said the estate was becoming unsafe.”
“Because I didn’t know who was sending them.”
Carmine leaned back.
Claire continued.
“You told me Helena had already explained Leo was becoming difficult around routines.”
Carmine looked toward the wall.
That was true.
Helena had told him Leo was resisting bedtime.
Refusing meals.
Throwing small tantrums.
Normal three-year-old behavior, exaggerated just enough to make Claire’s concerns sound like overreaction.
Claire pushed another document across the table.
Her attorney had received an anonymous packet two weeks earlier.
A written summary claimed Leo lacked consistent meals at Carmine’s estate.
That staff routinely handled childcare without parental oversight.
That armed family associates moved freely through the home.
That Carmine was increasingly absent.
The last point was partly true.
Carmine had spent the previous month in long meetings because he was restructuring several Bellucci companies.
He wanted legitimate businesses separated from older family operations.
The work consumed him.
Helena hated the restructuring.
She had said so repeatedly.
“You’re dismantling what your father built.”
Carmine always answered the same way.
“I’m making sure Leo doesn’t have to inherit every problem I did.”
Claire watched him reading.
“I was preparing to ask for temporary majority custody.”
Carmine looked up.
The sentence hurt.
It also made sense.
“You thought I was neglecting him.”
“I thought something was happening in your house and you either couldn’t see it or wouldn’t.”
He wanted to defend himself.
Then remembered finding Leo soaked, filthy, and hungry less than fifty feet from where Carmine had been talking business.
Claire had been wrong about one thing.
May you like
He had not known.
But perhaps the more important truth was that his house had made it possible for him not to know.
