Chapter 3
Mrs. Keller had not seen everything.
That was the first thing she made clear.
She had been Audrey’s nanny, not Natalie’s confidante. But servants hear what powerful people forget to lower their voices around, and three years earlier Mrs. Keller had heard enough to understand that something inside the Moretti family had gone badly wrong.
“Natalie came to me the night before she disappeared,” she said. “She asked me to keep Audrey in my room.”
Cassandro looked at his daughter.
Audrey sat wrapped in a towel beside one of his bodyguards, playing absently with the blue bracelet on her wrist.
“Why?”
Mrs. Keller looked at Damian.
“She said Damian had been paying men who were supposed to answer only to you.”
Damian laughed.
“Paying?”
Mrs. Keller nodded.
“She called it buying loyalty.”
Vivienne stepped forward until the guard blocked her.
“Natalie called everyone a traitor whenever she didn’t get her way.”
Mrs. Keller’s expression tightened.
“She was afraid.”
Vivienne smiled cruelly.
“Natalie was always afraid. That was how she controlled Cassandro.”
Cassandro looked at her.
Vivienne continued before she noticed the danger.
“She cried, he stopped meetings. Audrey got sick, he canceled dinners. The whole house moved around that woman’s moods.”
Mrs. Keller shook her head.
“No. The house moved because Cassandro loved his family.”
Vivienne rolled her eyes.
“Same weakness.”
That sentence settled between them.
Cassandro had heard versions of it from old men his entire life. Family made men soft. Children made bosses predictable. Love created leverage.
Apparently Vivienne believed it too.
Mrs. Keller continued.
“Natalie said she had found out Damian was meeting with three Moretti captains behind your back. She planned to tell you after dinner.”
Cassandro remembered that night.
Natalie never came to dinner.
Instead, Damian had arrived with her phone and a story.
Natalie had left.
She needed space.
She had taken money, clothing, and a car.
Cassandro had spent eleven months searching anyway.
Then stopped.
That was the part he hated remembering.
“What happened before dinner?” he asked.
Mrs. Keller looked at the hidden room.
“Vivienne asked Natalie to meet her by the pool.”
Cassandro turned slowly toward his current wife.
Vivienne smiled faintly.
“She came willingly.”
Mrs. Keller’s voice shook.
“She didn’t leave willingly.”
Then Audrey looked up from the towel.
“Aunt Vivi made Mommy cry.”
Every adult in the passage stopped.
May you like
Audrey had been too young to remember most of that night.
But apparently not all of it.
