Chapter 2
Nobody left the garden.
Valentina did not need to order the gates closed.
The bodyguards understood from the way she looked toward them.
Metal locks engaged quietly at the far end of the estate.
Grant wiped blood from the corner of his mouth.
His eyes hardened.
“You're detaining family now?”
Valentina walked toward the ruined baskets.
“My three-year-old just told me you took something from our mother.”
“He’s three.”
Leo flinched.
Valentina stopped.
Then slowly looked at her brother.
Grant’s shoulders shifted.
He realized it immediately.
Wrong target.
Wrong tone.
Valentina’s voice dropped.
“Say that about my son again.”
Grant looked away.
Adelaide touched Valentina’s wrist.
Her hand was still trembling.
“Don’t let him redirect you.”
Valentina looked at her mother.
Adelaide’s eyes were tired.
But sharp.
The security staff began collecting every basket, napkin and fallen utensil.
No red envelope.
Valentina turned to the estate camera operator.
“Footage.”
The garden cameras had recorded the luncheon.
One angle showed Adelaide speaking privately with Leo near the dessert table.
She removed a red envelope from inside her cardigan.
Another angle showed Grant watching from twenty feet away.
Evelyn noticed too.
Then Adelaide placed the envelope beside her handbag while helping Leo decorate the final cupcake.
Three minutes later, Grant walked past.
His hand disappeared briefly behind the stacked baskets.
When he continued walking, the envelope was gone.
Valentina paused the footage.
Grant’s face was reflected faintly in the screen behind her.
No denial.
She turned.
“Where is it?”
Grant rubbed one thumb across his capo pin.
A nervous habit Valentina remembered from childhood.
“You’re assuming I took it.”
“I watched you.”
“You watched an angle.”
Valentina’s breathing slowed.
Grant continued.
“You’ve spent years telling everybody not to confuse suspicion with proof.”
He almost smiled.
“Practice what you preach.”
The words were arrogant.
They were also fair.
Valentina hated that.
She looked back at the recording.
Then something else appeared.
Grant did take the envelope.
But thirty seconds later, he handed it to someone near the coat station.
A senior capo named Dominic Hale.
Valentina stared at the screen.
Dominic had served beside her father for twenty years.
He was one of the men she trusted most.
“Where is Dominic?”
Nobody answered.
A bodyguard checked the gate log.
His face tightened.
“Boss…”
Valentina turned.
“He left nine minutes before the gates closed.”
Grant finally smiled.
Small.
Controlled.
May you like
The envelope was gone.
And one of Valentina’s oldest loyalists had carried it out for him.
