Chapter 4 - THE FIRST DOOR HE CLOSED
Behind the gardening books was not Elena’s notebook.
It was a folded housekeeping schedule.
Emma pointed to four dates circled in blue ink.
“Those were nights Marcus came here after everyone else had gone upstairs.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he asked me to stay late and clean this room.”
Marcus almost never entered Elena’s study when she was alive.
After her death, he had apparently found reasons to visit repeatedly.
Emma had written the dates down because the requests bothered her.
Vittorio photographed the schedule and called David Mercer.
“Freeze Marcus’s access.”
“To what?”
“Everything.”
David inhaled.
“Vittorio, he manages half the vendor network.”
“Then tomorrow we learn whether we own a company or whether Marcus does.”
The consequence arrived before breakfast.
Two trucking subcontractors stopped dispatching loads because payments had been suspended.
A bank compliance officer called asking why authorized transfers were suddenly being challenged.
Three managers demanded to know whether the company was solvent.
Marcus had made himself difficult to remove.
That had been the point.
Vittorio hired an outside forensic accounting firm anyway.
Then he made a second decision.
He gave Rachel Stein a copy of Emma’s video.
“Preserve the original metadata,” he said.
Rachel looked surprised.
“You understand this also shows you hitting them.”
“Yes.”
“You could keep it inside the family for now.”
“No.”
The old Vittorio would have protected the family name first.
The old Vittorio had also left his daughter alone with Bianca.
That afternoon, he took Lucy to the pediatrician.
There were no serious injuries, only redness where Bianca had pulled her cardigan tight against her shoulder.
The doctor asked Lucy questions while Vittorio remained outside.
He hated that.
He hated more that it was appropriate.
When Lucy came out, she walked past him and took Theresa’s hand.
Vittorio did not protest.
Back at the estate, one of the security supervisors brought him entry records from the smart locks.
Marcus’s code had opened Elena’s study six times during the previous two months.
Bianca’s had opened it twice.
One entry had occurred at 1:17 in the morning.
The night before Vittorio announced he planned to sell the company’s security division and spend more time with Lucy.
Vittorio stared at the timestamp.
May you like
The breakfast cruelty had not begun with breakfast.
It had begun when Marcus realized Vittorio was finally preparing to change his life.
