Chapter 2 - The Man Beside the Altar
“Seal the gates,” I ordered.
Marco touched the microphone beneath his collar.
“Lock down the estate. Nobody leaves.”
The iron gates began closing at the far end of the property.
Guests rose from their chairs. Men reached instinctively beneath their jackets. Women pulled children closer. Members of the Romano family gathered around Isabella, but none stepped between us.
They knew better.
Isabella removed her veil slowly.
“You’re making a spectacle over a frightened employee and corrupted footage.”
“Corrupted?” Marco repeated. “You haven’t even examined it.”
“I don’t need to. I know I never said those words.”
Sophia finally spoke.
“You said them.”
Her voice was quiet, but every person in the garden heard it.
Isabella looked at her with open contempt.
“You should be careful.”
I took one step forward.
“No. You should.”
Her eyes shifted to mine.
For the first time since I had known her, the polished smile disappeared completely.
“Alessandro, send the guests home. We’ll discuss this privately.”
“You threatened a woman inside my house.”
“I disciplined an employee who was stealing.”
Sophia stared at her.
“I never stole anything.”
“The bracelet,” Isabella said. “The diamond bracelet you hid in your room.”
Sophia’s expression changed.
Not guilt.
Recognition.
“I never saw that bracelet until you put it in my drawer.”
A murmur passed through the staff members near the service entrance.
I looked at Marco.
“Was there a report?”
“Isabella informed me this morning,” he said. “She asked me not to disturb you before the ceremony.”
“How considerate,” I said.
Isabella’s father, Vittorio Romano, pushed through the guests.
He was a broad man with silver hair and a face built for intimidating weaker people.
“This wedding will proceed,” he announced. “My daughter will not be humiliated because a maid’s child told a story.”
Emma pressed closer to Sophia.
I moved in front of them.
“The wedding is over.”
Vittorio’s jaw hardened.
“You understand what you’re saying?”
“Perfectly.”
“Our agreement holds both families together.”
“Then perhaps your family should have considered that before helping Isabella threaten someone under my protection.”
“You have no proof my family knew anything.”
“I have enough proof to cancel a wedding.”
“And start a war?”
The words settled heavily across the garden.
Several guests moved toward the exits, only to find security blocking every path.
I looked directly at Vittorio.
“If war is what you came prepared for, you picked a poor day to begin it.”
Marco approached me.
“We found Luca’s car behind the east wing. Driver’s gone.”
“Security tunnels?”
“Two cameras went offline six minutes ago.”
Luca knew the estate.
We had grown up there together.
If anyone could slip through the old service passages beneath the mansion, it was him.
“Take four men,” I said. “Bring him back alive.”
Marco nodded, then looked at Sophia and Emma.
“I’m moving them to the secure room.”
Sophia shook her head.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
She swallowed, but forced herself to meet my eyes.
“If you take me away now, she’ll say I ran because I was lying.”
“Sophia,” I said, “this is no longer about appearances.”
“It has always been about appearances. That is how people like Isabella survive.”
Isabella gave a small laugh.
“You’re suddenly brave.”
“No,” Sophia answered. “I’m still terrified.”
She looked down at Emma.
“But my daughter was braver than I was.”
My mother stepped forward.
“Elena,” I said, turning to her, “what were you going to tell me?”
She looked toward Sophia, then lowered her eyes.
“I knew her husband.”
Sophia went completely still.
“What?” I asked.
“Daniel Bennett worked for our financial office seven years ago.”
Sophia stared at my mother.
“You knew Daniel?”
Elena nodded.
“He was an outside auditor. Your father hired him when several accounts stopped balancing.”
My father had died five years earlier. His records had been reviewed repeatedly after his death, but I had never seen Daniel Bennett’s name.
“Why wasn’t this in our files?”
“Because someone removed it.”
“Who?”
My mother glanced toward the empty place where Luca had stood.
“I believed it was your uncle.”
Luca’s father.
The man who had helped raise me after my father’s death.
Sophia looked unsteady.
“Daniel told me he was investigating a shipping company,” she said. “He said powerful people were moving money through it. A week later, his car went off a bridge.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Elena said.
Sophia’s face crumpled, but she held herself upright.
“You knew?”
“I suspected. I didn’t have proof.”
“You had seven years.”
The accusation struck my mother harder than shouting would have.
Elena’s voice weakened.
“I was afraid the investigation would destroy Alessandro’s position before he was ready to lead.”
Sophia stared at her.
“So you protected your family.”
“I protected my son.”
“And mine lost her father.”
Emma looked up at her mother.
“Mommy?”
Sophia immediately knelt and held her.
“It’s okay, baby.”
“No,” Elena whispered. “It isn’t.”
A gunshot cracked somewhere inside the mansion.
Guests screamed.
Marco’s voice came through my earpiece.
“East corridor. Luca’s armed.”
I reached beneath my jacket and drew my pistol.
Isabella moved backward.
I caught the movement.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from the gunfire.”
I watched her hand slide toward the folds of her gown.
“Hands where I can see them.”
She froze.
Then smiled.
“You don’t trust me anymore?”
“I’m beginning to think I never knew you.”
Security escorted the guests toward the reinforced ballroom. Vittorio protested until two guards surrounded him.
My mother took Emma’s hand.
“Sophia, come with us.”
Sophia looked at me.
“Find him.”
“I will.”
“And make him tell the truth.”
“That depends on how much he values breathing.”
I entered the mansion with my weapon drawn.
The white flowers, polished marble, and wedding decorations now looked absurd against men in dark suits searching room by room.
Marco met me near the library.
“Luca shot one of the guards in the shoulder. He went into your father’s old office.”
“Is there another exit?”
“Not unless he knows about the passage behind the fireplace.”
“He knows.”
We moved through the west corridor.
The office door stood open.
Inside, papers burned in the fireplace.
The hidden panel behind my father’s portrait had been pushed aside.
Marco crouched beside the ashes and pulled out the edge of a half-burned ledger.
“Financial records.”
I heard movement behind the wall.
We entered the passage.
The tunnel was narrow and dark, built generations earlier when men in my family believed every house required an escape route and every friend might become an enemy.
Fifty feet ahead, footsteps struck stone.
“Luca,” I called.
The footsteps stopped.
“You should’ve married her, cousin,” his voice echoed through the darkness. “You could’ve had everything.”
“I already had everything.”
“No. You had what your father left you.”
A shot flashed from the darkness.
Stone shattered beside my head.
Marco returned fire.
We heard Luca run again.
At the end of the tunnel, a steel door stood open.
Beyond it waited the abandoned carriage house near the edge of the property.
We emerged in time to see a black SUV crash through the half-closed gate.
Marco fired at the tires, but the vehicle kept moving.
Luca escaped onto the road.
A phone began ringing on the ground.
He had dropped it beside the door.
Marco picked it up.
The screen displayed one incoming call.
Isabella.
He answered and activated the speaker.
“Luca?” Isabella whispered. “Did you get the ledger?”
Neither of us spoke.
“I can’t keep Alessandro distracted forever,” she continued. “My father is losing control of the guests. Tell me you have the ledger.”
I took the phone.
“You should have checked who answered.”
Silence.
Then Isabella breathed my name.
“Alessandro.”
“Now I know why you wanted to marry me.”
She recovered quickly.
“You know nothing.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I will. Alone.”
“You’ve lost the right to make requests.”
“No,” she said. “I still have something you need.”
“What?”
May you like
“Proof of who ordered Daniel Bennett’s death.”
The call ended.
