Chapter 6: What Vivian's Mother Knew
The house was forty minutes north of the city, set back from the road behind a long gravel drive and a row of old cypress trees.
The lights were on inside.
A silver car was parked at an angle near the front steps, like someone had arrived in a hurry.
Vivian's car.
Vincent told the driver to stop at the gate.
He looked at me.
"You don't have to come in."
"She's there because of me," I said.
"I'm coming in."
He didn't argue.
The front door was answered by a woman in her late seventies — small, sharp-eyed, wrapped in a wool cardigan despite the warmth of the house.
She looked at Vincent and her expression did not change in the way most people's expressions changed when they saw him.
She had been expecting someone.
Just not him.
"Mrs.
Alcott," Vincent said.
"Vincent." Her voice was careful.
"This is unexpected."
"Is Vivian here?"
A pause of exactly one second too long.
"No."
"Her car is in your drive."
Another pause.
"She stopped briefly.
She's already gone."
Vincent looked at me.
Then back at Mrs.
Alcott.
"This is Isabella Romano," he said.
"Teresa Romano's daughter."
Mrs.
Alcott's eyes moved to me.
Something happened in them — not surprise.
Something older than surprise.
Something that had been waiting a long time to arrive.
"May we come in?" Vincent said.
She stepped back from the door.
The sitting room was warm and cluttered with the particular kind of clutter that accumulates over decades — framed photographs on every surface, stacked books, a ceramic dish of hard candies near the sofa.
I looked at the photographs as we sat down.
One of them stopped me.
A younger Mrs.
Alcott.
Standing beside a man in a dark suit.
And between them, a teenage girl with Vivian's cheekbones and Elena Moretti's dark eyes.
I looked at it for too long.
"You see it," Mrs.
Alcott said.
"Who is she?"
The old woman folded her hands in her lap.
"Her name was Cora.
She was Vivian's older sister." She paused.
"And she was Elena Moretti's closest friend."
Vincent leaned forward.
"You never told me you knew Elena."
"You never asked me the right question."
"What is the right question?"
Mrs.
Alcott looked at her hands.
"Ask me why Elena trusted Teresa Romano with her child instead of coming to the Moretti family."
The room was very quiet.
"Why?" Vincent said.
"Because Elena knew someone in your family wanted her d*ad," Mrs.
Alcott said.
"Not the accident.
The accident was arranged.
Elena knew it was coming.
She had two weeks of warning and she spent those two weeks making sure the baby would survive it."
I felt the air go out of the room.
"She chose Teresa," I said.
"Teresa was her nurse during a brief hospital stay the month before.
Elena said she was the only person she had met in years who wanted nothing from her." Mrs.
Alcott looked at me directly.
"She gave Teresa the locket, the photograph, and enough money to disappear.
She made Teresa promise to raise you as her own and never contact the Moretti family."
"Because she didn't know which one of them had arranged it," Vincent said.
"She suspected your father," Mrs.
Alcott said.
"She had found documents.
Financial documents.
Your grandfather had written a clause into the family inheritance — if Elena produced a child before Vincent married, that child would receive an equal share." She paused.
"Your father did not want to share."
Vincent stood up.
He walked to the window and stood there with his back to us, the same way he had stood in the study at Belladonna House, and I understood now that this was what he did when he needed a moment to keep his face from showing what was happening inside it.
"Vivian knew all of this," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Cora told her.
Years ago.
Cora felt guilty about staying silent." Mrs.
Alcott's voice thinned.
"Vivian used it.
She's been using it for years.
She got close to you because she wanted to make sure the secret stayed buried.
And when she found out a young woman named Romano had applied to work tonight's event—"
"She arranged the hiring herself," Vincent said.
"She needed to see if you knew anything.
If you were a threat." Mrs.
Alcott looked at me.
"She planned to frighten you away.
Or worse."
"The riding crop," I said.
"She wanted you gone before Vincent arrived.
She didn't expect him early."
Vincent turned around.
His face was composed.
His voice was level.
But his hands, at his sides, were very still in the way that meant the opposite of calm.
"Where is she now?" he said.
Mrs.
Alcott reached into the pocket of her cardigan and placed a small USB drive on the table between us.
"Cora recorded everything," she said.
"Every conversation.
Every confession Vivian ever made in this house.
She left it with me before she passed last year." She pushed the drive toward Vincent.
"She said to give it to the right person when the right moment came."
Vincent picked it up.
"Where is Vivian?" he said again.
"She came here to take that drive," Mrs.
Alcott said.
"I told her Cora never left me anything.
She believed me." A pause.
May you like
"She won't be far."
Vincent looked at Marco, who was already moving toward the door.
