Chapter 6
Damian came at sunset.
He did not wait to be invited.
That was his first mistake.
He walked into my father’s old study with a cane he did not need and the expression of a man returning to property he still considered partly his.
His eyes moved to Veronica’s bare hand.
Then Sofia’s apron on the desk.
Then me.
“So.”
I leaned back.
“So.”
He smiled faintly.
“You finally noticed.”
That angered me more than denial.
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
“How long have you been training my daughter behind my back?”
His expression hardened.
“Training is your word.”
“No.”
I pointed to the apron.
“That was hers.”
Damian shrugged.
“Sofia needs to understand the family she belongs to.”
“She belongs to me.”
Wrong phrase.
I corrected myself immediately.
“No.”
I looked toward the hallway where she was playing with Thomas.
“She belongs to herself.”
Damian laughed.
“There’s Evelyn talking.”
There.
My dead wife again.
He hated her enough that two years of death had not made him generous.
“What did Evelyn do to you?”
His smile disappeared.
I had finally asked the right question.
“Nothing.”
“No.”
I leaned forward.
“You don’t build a caste system around a dead woman because she did nothing.”
Damian stared.
Then Miles, standing by the wall, whispered:
“She found the cellar.”
Damian turned sharply.
Too late.
I looked at Miles.
“What cellar?”
He swallowed.
“The old service cellar.”
I had never heard of it.
Damian’s face had gone cold.
I stood.
“Show me.”
He refused.
Thomas found it anyway.
Behind the original wine room, a false shelving unit opened into a narrow underground chamber.
Not much inside.
Old servant ledgers.
Photographs.
Family notes.
And one locked trunk bearing my father’s signet.
I looked at Damian.
“What was Evelyn looking for?”
Silence.
Then I saw one photograph pinned inside the trunk lid.
Evelyn.
Pregnant with Sofia.
Standing beside my father.
Both furious.
I had never seen it.
On the back, my father had written:
SHE KNOWS WHAT WE DID TO HER MOTHER.
My chest went cold.
Evelyn had not merely been insulted because her mother worked for the Vaughns.
Something had happened to her mother inside this house.
May you like
Something my father and Damian both knew.
And my wife had discovered it before she died.
