Chapter 3 - THE BROTHER WHO WASN’T DEAD
Dominic stared at the drawing.
“My brother is dead.”
Nobody corrected him.
That frightened Emma.
Sophie leaned against her.
“He had Daddy’s eyes.”
Dominic’s fingers tightened around the paper.
Vanessa sat down hard on the edge of the bed.
Mercer looked twenty years older than he had ten minutes earlier.
Dominic noticed.
“You knew.”
Mercer didn’t answer.
“Samuel.”
The doctor exhaled.
“I knew Michael survived.”
Vanessa whispered, “Not here.”
Dominic turned toward her.
“You lost the right to choose where this conversation happens.”
Sophie started rubbing her thumb against Emma’s sleeve.
Emma recognized the movement.
Too much sound.
Too many adults.
Too much fear.
“Mr. Bellini.”
Dominic looked at her.
“Sophie shouldn’t hear this.”
He glanced at his daughter.
The fury inside him reorganized itself immediately.
“Mrs. Pollard.”
The head housekeeper appeared seconds later, having apparently been waiting halfway down the hall.
Dominic started to ask her to take Sophie.
The child grabbed Emma’s shirt.
“No.”
It was quiet.
Absolute.
Dominic looked at Emma.
Emma understood what he was asking.
She also understood what accepting might mean.
Vanessa already hated her.
Now Dominic’s daughter trusted her.
That made Emma more dangerous.
“I can stay with her,” Emma said.
Dominic nodded.
“Stay in the sitting room. Don’t leave this floor.”
Vanessa looked up sharply.
“Dominic—”
“Not one word.”
Emma took Sophie’s hand.
Before they reached the doorway, Sophie turned back.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t break Mommy’s bracelet.”
Dominic looked at the silver stars in his palm.
“I won’t.”
Sophie nodded.
Then Emma led her away.
The sitting room across the hall overlooked the dark lawn.
Emma found an old blanket and wrapped it around Sophie’s shoulders.
For several minutes the child said nothing.
Emma didn’t ask questions.
She picked up a magazine.
Pretended to read.
Eventually Sophie whispered, “The medicine makes pictures go away.”
Emma put the magazine down.
“What pictures?”
Sophie touched her forehead.
“In here.”
Emma’s stomach tightened.
“Did Aunt Vanessa tell you that?”
A nod.
“Did she say why the pictures had to go away?”
Sophie frowned.
“So Daddy wouldn’t get hurt.”
Emma said nothing.
That mattered.
Vanessa believed she was protecting Dominic.
Or had convinced Sophie she was.
From the bedroom came Dominic’s muffled voice.
“Start at the beginning.”
Mercer answered.
Emma couldn’t hear every word.
But she heard enough.
Michael Bellini had been Dominic’s younger brother.
Wild.
Impulsive.
Twenty-six when a warehouse fire supposedly killed him.
No body had been recovered intact.
Their father identified him using a watch found in the debris.
Dominic believed it.
Vanessa believed it too.
Until nine years later.
Michael contacted her.
Alive.
He claimed the fire had been staged because he owed money to people who would kill him.
Vanessa secretly gave him cash.
Mercer treated him once for an infected wound.
Dominic was never told.
Then Elena found out.
Emma felt sick.
Sophie crawled onto the couch beside her.
“Are grown-ups always bad at secrets?”
Emma almost smiled.
“Pretty bad.”
“My daddy too?”
“Probably.”
Sophie considered this seriously.
“Okay.”
The bedroom door opened.
Dominic stood there.
His face looked carved from stone.
“Emma.”
She rose.
Sophie grabbed her hand.
Dominic saw it.
“You can bring her.”
Vanessa objected immediately.
“This conversation—”
“Is about her life.”
Dominic’s voice was calm again.
“That means she doesn’t get treated like furniture.”
Emma brought Sophie back.
Dominic sat on the floor rather than the chair.
It changed the room.
He was still the most powerful person there.
But now he was eye level with his daughter.
“Michael came to the estate the night Elena died,” he said.
Vanessa looked ashamed.
“She had asked to meet him.”
Dominic stared.
“Why?”
“Because she discovered money missing from one of your charitable accounts.”
Dominic frowned.
“What money?”
“Payments I was making to Michael.”
There it was.
Not greed.
Not yet.
Vanessa had been helping their supposedly dead brother.
Dominic looked almost more hurt than angry.
“You stole from me.”
“I borrowed.”
“For nine years?”
“I was going to replace it.”
“With what?”
Vanessa said nothing.
Dominic laughed bitterly.
Emma saw the family wound now.
Vanessa hadn’t hidden Michael because she hated Dominic.
She had hidden him because she loved two brothers who hated each other.
And made terrible choices trying to keep both.
Mercer continued.
“Elena found the transfers. She confronted Vanessa.”
“I told her the truth,” Vanessa said.
“No,” Dominic replied. “You told her some truth.”
Vanessa accepted that.
“Elena wanted to tell you.”
“Of course she did.”
“I begged her not to.”
“Of course you did.”
“She said Michael could come home. She thought you would help him.”
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“She didn’t know Michael.”
Vanessa looked at him.
“Neither did you anymore.”
That landed.
Dominic looked away.
Emma realized there had been history between the brothers beyond the staged death.
“What happened at the bridge?” Dominic asked.
Vanessa rubbed her palms against her skirt.
“Elena arranged to meet Michael. She wanted him to promise he would stop taking money from me.”
“And Sophie?”
“Elena couldn’t find the sitter.”
“So she brought a four-year-old child to meet a fugitive?”
“No.”
Vanessa’s voice broke.
“I followed her. Sophie was with me.”
Dominic stared.
“You took Sophie?”
“She woke up while Elena was leaving. She cried for her mother. I thought if Elena saw Sophie, she’d come home instead of meeting Michael.”
“That was your plan?”
“I was scared.”
Vanessa’s tears spilled.
“I had spent years holding this family together with lies. I thought one more lie could fix everything.”
Emma glanced at Sophie.
The child wasn’t following every detail.
But she was watching faces.
Children always did.
Dominic reached for the drawing.
“What happened when you got there?”
“Michael was angry.”
“At Elena?”
“At me.”
“Why?”
“Because I told him the money was over.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“Elena convinced you?”
Vanessa nodded.
“She said I wasn’t saving him anymore. I was teaching him that everyone else would pay for his decisions.”
For the first time, Dominic’s expression changed toward his dead wife.
Not grief.
Pride.
“That sounds like Elena.”
Vanessa smiled through tears.
“Yes.”
“What happened next?”
“Michael left.”
Dominic waited.
Vanessa did not continue.
“Then why did Elena die?”
Mercer looked toward Sophie.
Emma felt the shift before Vanessa answered.
“Elena’s car went off the road an hour later.”
“Police said she was alone.”
“She was.”
“Then what did Sophie see?”
Vanessa looked at her niece.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie whispered, “Yes, you do.”
Every adult turned.
Vanessa’s face crumpled.
Sophie slid off the bed.
She walked toward the red coat.
Reached into the torn sleeve.
Her little fingers worked inside the lining.
Emma heard paper scrape.
Sophie pulled out a small rectangular card.
A parking ticket.
Old.
Water stained.
Stamped with a date.
The night Elena died.
Dominic took it.
The location printed across the top was not Mill Creek Road.
It was St. Catherine’s Hospital.
Emergency parking garage.
Time: 11:47 p.m.
Dominic stared.
Elena’s crash had been reported at 10:52.
Emma looked at Vanessa.
Mercer stopped breathing.
Dominic raised his eyes.
“My dead wife’s coat was inside a hospital an hour after she died.”
Vanessa whispered, “I never saw that ticket.”
Dominic turned it over.
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On the back, written in faded blue ink, were six words.
DON’T LET MICHAEL TAKE SOPHIE HOME.
