Chapter 2
Agnes refused to explain in the chapel.
Not because she wanted privacy.
Because she was terrified someone was listening.
That alone told me Lorenzo’s shadow was larger than one casket.
I moved us into my father’s old library.
Two guards outside.
One inside.
No Owen.
No Corinne.
My mother sat beside the fireplace wrapped in a blanket.
“Start.”
She looked at me.
“Your father had a brother.”
“I know.”
“No. You knew the version we gave you.”
Lorenzo was younger than my father by five years.
Brilliant.
Charming.
Cruel in the way charming men are often allowed to become because everyone mistakes likability for restraint.
When my father, Antonio, became head of Rinaldi, Lorenzo expected to become his permanent second.
Instead Antonio married Agnes.
Then began trusting her.
That offended Lorenzo more than losing the chair.
“He thought women belonged beside power, never inside it,” my mother said.
I almost smiled.
“He would have loved me.”
Agnes did not.
“He was afraid of you before you were born.”
That stopped me.
Antonio planned early to let his daughter inherit if she proved capable.
Lorenzo found out.
He built a faction around the claim that Rinaldi leadership could not pass through a woman.
My father removed him.
Publicly.
Then, eleven years ago, Lorenzo supposedly died overseas.
Car accident.
Closed casket.
No body I ever saw.
I had attended the funeral.
My mother stared into the fire.
“It was staged.”
“By Father?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To make Lorenzo disappear without splitting the family.”
There it was.
My father’s generation loved fake endings.
Declare a problem dead and hope nobody checks the grave.
“Where did Lorenzo go?”
“Connecticut first. Then Canada. Then I stopped knowing.”
“You stopped knowing?”
She looked at me.
“No.”
Another lie correcting itself.
“I stopped asking.”
That mattered.
Then I asked why Owen was forcing her into a casket.
Agnes closed her eyes.
“Because Lorenzo contacted me three weeks ago.”
My pulse slowed.
“What did he want?”
Her voice cracked.
“You.”
I waited.
“He said Rinaldi made a mistake when it let Antonio’s daughter inherit.”
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Then:
“He told me he was coming home to correct it.”
