Chapter 4
I looked at Miranda.
“What did you get?”
She flinched.
Vincent answered for her.
“Security.”
I laughed.
“From me?”
“From uncertainty.”
Old-man language.
Clean enough to hide dirt.
Miranda had married into a house with three children who adored their dead mother.
She struggled.
I knew that.
I thought we were learning.
Apparently someone noticed her resentment before I did.
Vincent approached her six months earlier.
He told her she would never truly become Mrs. Ferrante while Elena’s children remained the emotional center of my home.
Cruel.
Effective.
Then he offered a solution.
The children would go away temporarily.
Miranda and I could have a child of our own.
A “fresh” Ferrante heir.
I stared at her.
She started crying.
“I never said I wanted them hurt.”
“You strapped them to luggage.”
“They were supposed to think it was a trip.”
“You changed their names.”
“Only until—”
“Until they forgot which father to call?”
Her face collapsed.
Good.
The truth needed to sound ugly.
Gavin stepped between us verbally now.
“My sister was manipulated.”
I turned toward him.
“You punched me while three children were tied to suitcases.”
He shut up.
Then I asked Vincent:
“Why tonight?”
The lakeside portrait dinner was not random.
Most senior Ferrante branches were present.
If the children disappeared during the celebration, Vincent could immediately control the explanation.
Bennett arranged private schooling.
Bennett sent them away after emotional difficulty.
Bennett was unstable after Elena’s death.
Bennett needed rest.
Every lie built around something people already knew.
I worked too much after Elena died.
I became colder.
The kids spent more time with nannies than I wanted.
Truth made excellent camouflage.
Then Arthur said:
“The van wasn’t going to Maine tonight.”
I looked at him.
“Where?”
No answer.
Vincent closed his eyes.
Interesting.
Arthur knew something my uncle did not want exposed.
I stepped closer.
“Where?”
Arthur whispered:
“St. Catherine’s.”
My blood went cold.
An old Ferrante retreat in upstate New York.
The same property where my older sister Cecilia disappeared from family life twenty-six years earlier.
May you like
I had been told she ran away.
Suddenly, that story felt very different.
