Chapter 2
I told Marta to lock Ruby in the kitchen with the staff and call my attorney.
Then I told the gardeners to bring shovels.
Nobody moved.
They looked at Marco.
Not me.
That was the second blow of the morning.
My own staff hesitated because my brother had made himself powerful in my house.
I turned to them.
“Now.”
They moved.
Marco wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and tried to straighten his jacket.
“You’re making a mistake.”
I looked at Claudia.
She stood with one hand against the planter, breathing too fast.
Her eyes kept darting to the narrow strip of lavender.
Not to Ruby.
Not to Evelyn.
To the ground.
“What’s under there?” I asked.
Claudia swallowed.
“Nothing.”
“Then you won’t mind watching me dig.”
Marco stepped forward.
“This is Isabella’s garden. You really want to tear up the only part left untouched?”
I almost smiled.
Cruel man.
Smart man.
He thought my grief would stop my hands.
But grief had already taught me one thing.
The dead do not need flowers as much as the living need truth.
I took the first shovel myself.
Evelyn stood near the greenhouse, arms wrapped around her body.
I looked at her.
“You can go inside.”
She shook her head.
Her face was white.
“I want to see.”
Claudia hissed, “No, you don’t.”
Evelyn lifted her chin.
“Yes, I do.”
That small rebellion cut through me.
How long had my daughter been swallowing words in this house?
How many times had Claudia told her to be quiet?
How many times had I missed it because I was drowning in work, grief, and guilt?
The shovel sank into the soil.
Lavender roots tore.
I whispered an apology to Isabella.
Then I dug.
The first foot gave us nothing.
Only dark earth.
Marco’s confidence began returning.
“You see? You are destroying your wife’s memory because a child had a nightmare.”
Evelyn’s mouth trembled.
I dug deeper.
The shovel struck something hard.
Metal.
The sound rang against the greenhouse wall.
Claudia made a strangled sound.
I dropped to my knees and pulled soil away with my hands.
A black metal case emerged.
Small.
Heavy.
Wrapped in plastic.
My chest tightened.
Marco turned and ran.
He made it four steps before my security chief, Luca, came through the terrace door and caught him by the collar.
Marco struggled.
“Let go of me.”
Luca looked at me.
I shook my head.
“Hold him.”
Claudia backed away.
“Alessio, please.”
That word.
Please.
Too late.
I lifted the case from the ground.
There was a lock on it.
A keypad.
Old model.
Evelyn stepped closer.
“Mom’s birthday.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“She used Mom’s birthday for everything,” Evelyn whispered. “Claudia said dead women are useful when they keep things closed.”
My hands tightened around the box.
I entered Isabella’s birthday.
The lock clicked.
Inside was a bundle of documents sealed in plastic.
A flash drive.
A gold bracelet I had not seen in two years.
Isabella’s bracelet.
The one she wore the night she died.
The one the police said was lost in the crash.
My lungs stopped working.
I picked it up.
The clasp was broken.
There was dried mud caught in the links.
And one tiny smear of dark red beneath the hinge.
Claudia whispered, “That isn’t what it looks like.”
I looked at her.
“What does it look like?”
She said nothing.
I opened the documents.
Bank transfers.
Insurance papers.
A private investigator’s report.
And at the bottom, a printed email from my brother to Claudia dated three weeks before Isabella’s accident.
Once she signs the trust revision, we won’t need patience anymore.
My knees nearly buckled.
Isabella had died in a car crash during a storm.
That was what I had been told.
That was what the police report said.
That was what I buried.
A terrible accident.
Now her bracelet was under her garden with documents my wife and brother were terrified I would find.
I looked at Marco.
He had stopped fighting Luca.
His face had gone gray.
“Tell me this isn’t real,” I said.
He looked away.
That was his confession before words ever came.
Claudia began crying.
Not soft tears.
Angry tears.
The kind that blame the room for witnessing them.
“I loved you,” she said.
“No.”
“I did.”
“You married me eight months after my wife died.”
“You were alone.”
“You made sure of that?”
She slapped me.
The sound snapped across the terrace.
Luca moved, but I lifted my hand.
I barely felt the sting.
Compared to what was breaking inside me, it was nothing.
Claudia pointed at the box.
“You think Isabella was perfect? She was going to ruin this family. She found out Marco was moving company money. She found out your precious father knew. She was going to hand everything to federal investigators.”
My father.
My dead wife.
My brother.
My new wife.
Every name became a blade.
Evelyn whispered, “Mom didn’t crash, did she?”
No one answered.
That silence was worse than any scream.
I crouched in front of my daughter.
Her eyes were filling, but she refused to look away.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Promise?”
This time, the word hurt.
Because I had promised her I would protect her after the funeral.
Then I let Claudia into her home.
I let Marco handle the estate.
I let adults call her grief difficult.
I kissed her forehead.
“I promise. And this time I will earn it.”
Police arrived twenty minutes later.
Claudia tried to say Ruby had attacked her.
Marco said I assaulted him without cause.
Then Marta walked out with her phone.
Her hand shook.
“I recorded the garden,” she said.
Claudia went still.
Marta played the video.
Claudia shoving Ruby toward the dirt.
Marco telling Evelyn that if she spoke, boarding school would teach her silence.
Claudia raising the rake.
Me arriving.
Everything.
The officer looked at Claudia.
“Ma’am, turn around.”
Claudia screamed as they cuffed her.
Marco shouted for his lawyer.
But I barely heard them.
May you like
Because the flash drive from Isabella’s buried box had a label written in my wife’s handwriting.
If I die, Alessio, do not trust Marco.
