Chapter 7
The lake house had been a test.
Caleb admitted that much.
He insisted Victoria only wanted to make me sick.
Not kill me.
I stared at him.
“You expect that sentence to help?”
He looked away.
Victoria answered for him.
“You were impossible after the council split.”
I turned toward her.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
She stepped forward until a guard blocked her.
“You stopped listening to me.”
There it was.
Not grief.
Not money.
Control.
“After your mother started interfering, every conversation became about what Evelyn thought. What Grace heard. What your old capos wanted.”
I stared.
“You were jealous of my mother.”
Victoria laughed.
“I was tired of being treated like a guest in a house I was expected to help run.”
“You were my fiancée.”
“Exactly.”
She said it as if engagement were ownership.
Caleb looked at the floor.
I noticed.
“You disagree?”
He swallowed.
“She was promised more.”
“By who?”
Silence.
“Caleb.”
“My uncle.”
I went still.
Victoria’s mother’s brother, Frank Hale, had served my father years ago before disappearing from Carter circles.
“What did Frank promise?”
Victoria answered.
“That when you married me, the Hales would finally have permanent standing inside Carter.”
I almost laughed.
“You thought marriage came with rank.”
“No.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“I was told what your father intended.”
My father had been dead six years.
He had never mentioned any such promise.
That did not mean he had not made one.
Old Mafia men made private promises like other people made dinner reservations.
Too many.
Too easily.
“What proof?”
Victoria smiled faintly.
“Inside the vault.”
My mother’s letter.
There it was.
The old Carter vault.
Whatever Victoria wanted was connected to a promise she believed my father had made.
But my mother had stood between her and the evidence.
Then I had.
The poisoning suddenly made ugly sense.
May you like
Victoria did not only want me dead.
She wanted me gone before marriage so she could control the story of what had been promised afterward.
