Chapter 10
Marco tried to bargain.
Of course he did.
He asked to speak with me alone.
I refused.
Sofia stayed.
So did Helena.
“If I tell you everything, I want out.”
I looked at him.
“You’re already out.”
His face tightened.
“You need me.”
“No.”
“I know what Helena planned after Sofia.”
Sofia looked at me.
I waited.
Marco continued.
“The grief worked.”
My jaw tightened.
“For what?”
“You stopped challenging old family decisions.”
I stared.
He was right.
After Sofia “died,” I changed.
I became colder.
Shorter meetings.
Less patience.
More reliance on people who had been around my father.
Helena.
Marco.
They had removed my wife and then presented themselves as the people who could help me survive losing her.
The simplicity made me sick.
Marco continued.
“She expected you to remarry eventually.”
Helena looked at him.
Warning.
He ignored it.
“To who?”
“One of the families she selected.”
I almost laughed.
“My marriage was going to be selected?”
“After enough time.”
Sofia stared at Helena.
“You were planning his next wife while I was behind your wall?”
Helena’s chin lifted.
“The family needed continuity.”
Sofia’s face twisted with disbelief.
“You kept me alive twenty feet away.”
“You refused to give me the recording.”
There.
Finally.
Direct.
No denial.
Sofia laughed once.
A broken sound.
“So if I gave it to you?”
Helena said nothing.
Marco answered.
“You would have been moved.”
I looked at him.
“Where?”
Silence.
“Marco.”
“North property.”
My expression changed.
An isolated Caruso hunting estate nobody used.
“Alive?”
He did not answer.
Sofia looked at Helena.
And we all understood.
The hidden room had never been permanent.
May you like
It was only where they kept Sofia until the evidence was found.
After that, she would have disappeared for real.
