Chapter 3
I returned to the garden without Elliot.
Agatha noticed immediately.
“Where is he?”
“Safe.”
She smiled thinly.
“With you?”
“No.”
That answer bothered her.
Good.
Julian stood beside her now. His jacket was ruined, his capo pin crooked, but the arrogance remained.
I looked at the guests.
“Party’s over.”
Nobody argued.
Family members moved toward the house. Some capos stayed exactly where they were.
Those were the ones who mattered.
I looked at them.
“Why are you still here?”
Thomas Vane, one of the oldest Bellafonte captains, answered.
“Because Agatha asked us to remain after dinner.”
There was no dinner now.
“What for?”
His eyes moved toward her.
Agatha sighed.
“Conrad.”
I ignored her.
Thomas continued.
“She wanted to discuss emergency family oversight.”
I almost laughed.
“Emergency caused by what?”
Silence.
Then another capo, Henry Cole, spoke.
“Your judgment.”
There it was.
I looked at Julian.
He did not smile anymore.
“What about my judgment?”
Thomas answered carefully.
“Agatha says since your wife died, you’ve become unpredictable where Elliot is concerned.”
My wife had been gone eighteen months.
An illness.
Fast.
Cruel.
Elliot barely remembered her.
Agatha apparently remembered her death as an opportunity.
“What evidence?”
No one answered immediately.
I let the silence work.
Finally Henry said:
“Today.”
I looked toward the broken trellis.
Of course.
Agatha chained my son in the sun.
Julian called him an animal.
Then they waited for me to respond in front of the exact men who had been invited to discuss whether my reactions made me unfit.
I almost admired the simplicity.
I looked at Agatha.
“You scheduled a conversation about my temper.”
She said nothing.
“And then manufactured something worth losing it over.”
Julian stepped forward.
“You still lost it.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“I found it.”
He frowned.
“My son was chained to a column.”
May you like
I gestured toward the remaining capos.
“And every man here now knows why you needed that image more than you needed a child safe.”
