Chapter 1
“My voice. Someone else’s words. Whose?”
Celina looked at Gareth.
Gareth stopped trying to climb out of the toy chest.
That was enough.
I lowered the phone slightly and looked toward the doorway.
My mother still held Milo against her chest. He had both pieces of his torn drawing pressed together with one small hand, trying to reconnect the place where our drawn fingers used to meet.
That image nearly broke whatever control I had left.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
He looked at the phone.
Then immediately buried his face against Ruth.
Fear.
Of my voice.
I looked back at Celina.
“How many times?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Gareth said:
“Dante, don’t—”
I opened the audio folder.
Twelve recordings.
MILO ONE.
MILO TWO.
MILO THREE.
Every filename was numbered.
My thumb stopped.
Celina’s face lost color.
I played the second.
My own voice came through the speaker.
“You make everything harder.”
Milo started crying.
I stopped it immediately.
My mother looked at Celina as though she no longer recognized her.
“How long have you been doing this?”
Celina whispered:
“They were just recordings.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“They were instructions.”
Gareth climbed halfway upright.
“He needed discipline.”
I turned.
“My son is four.”
“He cries every time Celina corrects him.”
There it was.
Not denial.
Justification.
I opened the message history attached to the files.
Most had been deleted.
One remained.
FROM: L.A.
PLAY THEM IN ORDER. HE MUST BELIEVE DANTE WANTS DISTANCE BEFORE THE TRANSFER.
I read it twice.
Transfer.
My eyes moved to Celina.
“What transfer?”
She looked at Gareth.
Again.
Wrong person.
Then Milo whispered from Ruth’s arms:
“Grandma…”
My mother looked down.
“What, sweetheart?”
He pointed at Celina.
“She said tomorrow I get another house.”
The nursery became completely still.
I looked at the phone again.
L.A.
Only one man in the Ashford family used those initials.
Leonard Ashford.
My father’s younger brother.
May you like
A man who had not stepped aboard my yacht in three years.
Apparently he had been inside my son’s head for weeks.
