Chapter 3
Elena had come to Adelaide three hours before she vanished.
No suitcase.
No goodbye.
No argument with Salvatore.
She entered Adelaide’s sitting room carrying Ella, kissed her daughter twice, then asked Adelaide to hold the child while she locked the door.
“She was terrified,” Adelaide said. “But not of you.”
Salvatore said nothing.
That mattered.
For eight months he had carried one memory more painfully than all the others: the final dinner before Elena vanished. She had been distant. Distracted. She barely touched him.
He had interpreted that distance as a woman preparing to leave.
Now he understood she might have been preparing to protect him.
“What did she say?”
Adelaide looked toward Hattie.
Hattie smiled.
The smile was enough to make Adelaide hesitate again.
Salvatore saw it.
He stood, walked to Hattie, and removed the Carbone ring she had continued wearing as though blood guaranteed privilege.
Her face changed.
“You don’t get to use my name to frighten her anymore.”
Hattie stared at her bare hand.
Adelaide finally continued.
“Elena told me someone inside your circle had promised pieces of Carbone territory to another family. She said Nolan was involved.”
Nolan immediately laughed. “Convenient.”
Anthony looked at him. “Be quiet.”
Adelaide took another breath. “She said she had heard them discussing what would happen if Salvatore refused.”
Salvatore leaned forward. “What would happen?”
Adelaide looked at Ella, who was asleep against a nanny’s shoulder across the room.
Then she answered.
“They would use the child.”
Hattie rolled her eyes. “Drama.”
Adelaide’s voice strengthened.
“Elena recorded them.”
That silenced the room.
Salvatore stared at his mother.
“A recording?”
Adelaide nodded.
“Hattie wanted to know where Elena hid it. That’s what they kept asking me.”
Nolan looked at Hattie.
A mistake.
Small.
But visible.
Anthony saw it too.
Salvatore stood. “Where is it?”
Adelaide shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Hattie laughed.
“You expect anyone to believe that?”
Adelaide looked at her.
“Elena never told me.”
“Then why protect the secret?”
“Because she told me something else.”
Salvatore waited.
His mother’s eyes filled.
May you like
“She said if anything happened to her, I should never trust the story they gave you.”
And suddenly Salvatore understood his wife had expected someone to rewrite her disappearance before it even happened.
