Chapter 6
Sofia had recorded them accidentally.
She had gone into my father’s study looking for one of Clara’s baby photographs. Her phone had been recording a voice message when she heard Helena and Marco enter the next room.
Instead of stopping it, she let it run.
“She heard everything,” Marco said.
I looked at him.
“You sound angry about that.”
“She misunderstood.”
Sofia laughed.
“No.”
Marco’s face hardened.
“You heard part of a conversation.”
“I heard Helena say Vincent would eventually choose his wife over his blood.”
Helena folded her arms.
“That is true.”
“And then?”
Sofia looked at her.
“You said a dead wife couldn’t influence anyone.”
Silence.
Clara was no longer in the room.
I had sent her with Sarah, one of Sofia’s old attendants who still worked the estate.
Good.
Some truths can wait until children are older.
I turned toward Sofia.
“Where’s the recording?”
She looked at the portrait.
Everyone followed her eyes.
Marco moved first.
My guards stopped him before he took two steps.
I stared at Sofia.
“You hid it there.”
“Before the lake house.”
“Where?”
She pointed at the back of the frame.
“Inside the lower wooden brace.”
Helena’s face went completely still.
The portrait.
Of course.
The one object she would never destroy after Sofia “died.”
It had become too useful.
A symbol of grief.
A centerpiece for memorials.
Proof that Sofia was gone.
Sofia almost smiled.
“She put my prison behind the one place she was afraid to damage.”
I removed the portrait from the wall completely.
One of my guards found a narrow recess behind the lower brace.
Inside was an old phone wrapped in cloth.
Dead.
But intact.
Marco whispered:
“Vincent.”
I looked at him.
He stopped.
I had never heard fear in his voice before.
I held the phone in my hand.
Helena stared at it.
For four years, she had stood beside evidence of her own betrayal.
May you like
Closer than I had stood to my wife.
And she never knew.
