Chapter 6 - Carmela’s Sister
Dante questioned Marina.
She did not deny it.
She had asked Carmela to meet her that evening.
But she never arrived.
Someone had sent Carmela a message from Marina’s stolen phone.
The trap had been constructed around both sisters.
Marina had hidden that fact because guilt had consumed her.
Rosa recognized the pattern.
Everybody in this house was carrying something alone.
Dante.
Matteo.
Marina.
Even Rosa.
Her secret surfaced next.
Sophia’s biological father, Eric Bennett, had not disappeared as Rosa claimed.
He had been imprisoned.
And six months earlier, someone anonymously paid for his attorney.
Eric had recently been released.
The sponsor?
A shell company controlled by Greco.
Dante’s first instinct was protection.
His second was control.
He ordered Rosa and Sophia moved to another property.
Rosa refused.
“You don’t get to rearrange my life because you’re frightened.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“And I’m trying to remain a person while you do it.”
The argument became their first real fight.
Dante accused her of underestimating the danger.
Rosa accused him of confusing love with ownership.
The word hung between them.
Love.
Neither had meant to say it.
Neither could take it back.
That night Rosa found an envelope beneath her pillow.
Inside was a photograph of Sophia asleep.
Taken that afternoon.
Someone was already inside the estate.
The household was locked down.
Every employee was investigated.
Nothing.
Then Rosa remembered something.
The photograph had been taken from low height.
Near the floor.
She searched Sophia’s room.
Behind a decorative air vent, Dante found a miniature camera.
There were cameras throughout the estate.
Installed months before Carmela died.
The footage had been transmitted to an outside server.
Someone had watched Carmela.
Then Dante.
Then Rosa and Sophia.
They traced the signal.
It led not to Greco.
Not to Eric.
But to the private medical foundation run by Dante’s mother, Beatrice Falcone.
Dante stared at the address.
His mother had spent eighteen months telling him Carmela’s death was the price powerful men paid for weakness.
She had encouraged revenge.
Isolation.
Cruelty.
May you like
And every afternoon at four, she had known exactly where her son would be.
Because she had been watching.
