Chapter 1
Raffaele ended the brunch in less than thirty seconds.
“Everyone out.”
Nobody asked whether he meant family too.
Chairs scraped against stone. Capos abandoned plates. Staff disappeared through the service doors. Bodyguards escorted guests toward the front drive without conversation.
Vanessa pushed herself upright from the patio chair.
“You just humiliated me in front of everyone.”
Raffaele did not look at her.
He was looking at Lily.
Up close, the condition of his daughter’s clothes was worse than he had realized.
Her pale yellow dress had once been expensive. Now one sleeve was torn near the shoulder, the hem was dark with old dirt, and something had been crudely stitched near the waist.
Her knees were dusty.
One dress shoe had a split seam.
Raffaele felt ashamed that he had not noticed sooner.
He had been away for four days handling business in Philadelphia.
When he left, Lily had been wearing clean clothes and arguing with her nanny about whether strawberries counted as breakfast.
Now she looked as though she had been sleeping in a storage room.
“Who dressed you this morning?” he asked.
Lily pointed toward Vanessa.
Vanessa folded her arms.
“She destroyed another outfit yesterday.”
“How?”
“She was playing where she was told not to.”
Lily shook her head immediately.
“No.”
Vanessa’s voice sharpened.
“Lily.”
The child stopped moving.
Raffaele heard the fear in the silence.
He turned toward Vanessa.
“Do not correct her while I’m speaking to her.”
“You’re going to believe a three-year-old over your wife?”
“Right now, yes.”
Vanessa stared at him.
Mason stood several feet away, looking at the floor.
Raffaele noticed something else.
The boy’s shoes were polished, but the leather along both toes had been deliberately scraped.
Not normal wear.
Repeated rough marks.
As though someone had rubbed them against stone.
“Mason.”
The boy looked up.
“Did Lily clean your shoes before today?”
Vanessa immediately said, “Don’t involve him.”
Raffaele turned his head slowly.
“I asked Mason.”
The eight-year-old swallowed.
His eyes flicked toward his mother.
Then toward Lily.
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
Mason whispered, “I don’t know.”
Vanessa stepped forward.
“He’s a child. He doesn’t understand what you’re asking.”
Raffaele almost laughed.
Ten minutes earlier she had been comfortable making a three-year-old kneel.
Now eight was too young to answer questions.
He called for Sofia Bennett, the senior house manager.
“Move Vanessa’s belongings to the east guest suite.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“What?”
“You will not enter either child’s room without me.”
“This is my home.”
“Tonight it’s a house you’re staying in while I determine what you’ve been doing inside it.”
Her face hardened.
“You don’t get to throw your wife into another wing because a spoiled child cried.”
Lily flinched.
Raffaele saw it.
Whatever uncertainty he still had disappeared.
“Do not call my daughter spoiled again.”
Vanessa looked toward the staff members standing inside the terrace doors.
She lowered her voice.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Raffaele lifted Lily into his arms.
“Then it will be mine.”
He looked toward Mason.
“Come with us.”
Mason hesitated.
Vanessa said his name.
Only his name.
But the boy’s entire body tightened.
Raffaele saw that too.
May you like
He did not yet understand it.
He only understood that when he walked inside carrying Lily, Mason followed him without looking back at his mother.
