Chapter 1
“Explain,” I said, stepping through the cash and overturned designer boxes. “The clock is ticking.”
Marcus stopped moving beneath the ruined shopping cart.
For the first time since I had entered that bedroom, fear reached his face before arrogance could cover it.
My mother sat against the headboard behind me, wrapped in a clean blanket one of my guards had brought. She was weak, her wrists marked by soft restraints, but her eyes were clear.
Catherine stood in the doorway wearing my mother’s gold pendant.
That bothered me almost as much as the money.
The pendant had belonged to my grandmother before Victoria. It was not merely jewelry. At private Romano dinners, the woman wearing it had traditionally been recognized as the household matriarch.
My mother had never taken it off willingly.
I looked at Catherine.
“Remove it.”
Her hand covered the pendant instinctively.
That was answer enough.
Serena shifted beside her. Marcus’s mistress had gone pale now that the dresser drawers were lying open around us. Watches, perfume, handbags, cash, and unopened medication turned the bedroom into an inventory of choices.
My mother went without.
They shopped.
“Folder,” Marcus said.
I looked at him.
“What?”
“Give me the folder and I’ll explain.”
I almost smiled.
Wrong order.
I broke the seal myself.
Inside were no contracts.
No legal documents.
My mother hated paperwork almost as much as I did.
There were photographs.
Dates.
Names written in her shaky handwriting.
Catherine wearing the pendant at private dinners.
Serena sitting in my chair.
Marcus handing envelopes to three men I recognized from my own crews.
Then one photograph stopped me.
My mother stood at the top of the staircase in her nightdress while Marcus blocked the way down.
On the back Victoria had written:
THE NIGHT HE TOLD THEM VALENTINA WAS NOT COMING BACK.
I looked at my husband.
He had not merely spent my mother’s care money.
May you like
He had been telling people I was gone.
And apparently, some of them had already begun reorganizing my family around that lie.
