Chapter 4
Marcus denied everything until I showed him the photographs.
Then he stopped denying and started justifying.
Predictable.
“Victoria was becoming impossible.”
I sat across from him in the old dining room.
“Because you stopped giving her medication.”
He looked away.
“She was already difficult.”
“Catherine wore her pendant.”
“Symbolic.”
“Exactly.”
Silence.
I leaned forward.
“Why?”
He exhaled.
“Because somebody had to run the house.”
“My mother was running it.”
“She was old.”
“My mother was seventy-one, not dead.”
His jaw tightened.
There.
The word dead mattered.
I watched him carefully.
“You expected me to stay away longer.”
He said nothing.
“Did you expect me to come back at all?”
His eyes moved.
Small.
Enough.
I sat back.
Interesting.
He had not planned to kill me.
I knew that instinctively.
Marcus preferred control he could explain.
Death creates too many questions.
So what did gone mean?
Then he said:
“You were becoming impossible too.”
There.
Two women.
Same accusation.
My mother difficult.
Me impossible.
Catherine and Serena easier.
Of course.
“What did you want?”
Marcus laughed bitterly.
“A marriage where I mattered.”
“You mattered.”
“As your husband.”
“Yes.”
“Exactly.”
I understood.
Being my husband was not enough because the title existed through me.
He wanted authority independent of me.
“Catherine as matriarch.”
Silence.
“Serena as partner.”
Silence.
“And you?”
Finally:
“Head of the household.”
Not the organization.
Not yet.
He was careful.
Domestic authority first.
If he could make staff, relatives, and selected capos treat him as the center inside my own estate, the political shift would follow more naturally.
“And my mother?”
“Removed.”
The word came too easily.
I stared.
Marcus corrected himself.
“Relocated.”
“No.”
I leaned forward.
“Removed was honest.”
He looked down.
Then I asked:
“Who helped you?”
His face changed.
May you like
There.
The real story had not reached its center yet.
