Chapter 6: Everything She Was Never Supposed to Find
Her name was Estelle.
She had built the Ferrante estate from the ground up alongside Nico's grandfather, and she had handed it to the next generation with the understanding — never written down, never needing to be — that it would be protected.
She sat across from Nico in his study with the folder of account statements between them, and she read every page without speaking.
Adeline stood near the window.
Marcus sat to one side, his briefcase on his knee.
When Estelle finished, she closed the folder.
"How long have you known?" she asked Nico.
"Since this morning."
"And the medication?"
"The lab results will take forty-eight hours."
Estelle looked at Adeline.
"You found them."
"Yes."
"How?"
"I count everything," Adeline said.
"Every pill.
Every dose.
Every time the count was off, I logged it."
"And you kept the tablets."
"I didn't know who to trust with them."
Estelle nodded slowly.
"That was the right decision." She turned back to Nico.
"Dorian has worked for this family for nine years."
"I know."
"And Camille has been your fiancée for three."
The word landed differently than Adeline expected.
She had known, of course — the household staff had made sure of that in the first week — but hearing it said plainly in this room, with the folder on the table, made something in her chest go tight.
"I know that too," Nico said.
"She will not go quietly," Estelle said.
"She has lawyers.
She has connections.
She will claim the accounts were authorized.
She will claim you were incapacitated and she was managing on your behalf."
"She was managing on my behalf," Nico said.
"That's the problem."
"No." Estelle tapped the folder.
"The problem is that she registered a private company in her maiden name and transferred estate funds into it.
That is not management.
That is theft." She said the word without drama, the way you name a thing you have decided to deal with.
"And the medication — if those tablets are what I think they are — that is something worse."
The room was quiet.
"What do you think they are?" Adeline asked.
Estelle looked at her.
"Nico's crash," she said.
"Eight months ago.
The car."
"It was an accident," Nico said.
His voice had gone flat.
"Was it."
It wasn't a question.
Nico looked at his grandmother for a long moment.
"You've thought this before," he said.
"I've thought it since the week after it happened.
The timing.
The route he never used.
The fact that his phone was wiped before the police examined it." Estelle folded her hands on the table.
"I had no proof.
I had nothing but the feeling that something was wrong and no one willing to listen to an old woman's instincts."
"You should have told me."
"You were in a hospital bed, Nico.
And then you were in that chair.
And the people around you were the people I was suspicious of." She looked at her hands.
"I didn't know how to reach you without going through them."
The silence stretched.
Adeline thought about eight months.
About all the small adjustments to the medication.
About a man who should have been recovering faster, walking sooner, returning to his desk and his accounts and his ability to ask questions.
About how convenient it had been that he hadn't.
"There's something else," Marcus said.
Everyone looked at him.
He opened his briefcase and removed a single sheet of paper.
"I ran a search this morning on Vellore Consulting.
The company Camille registered." He set the paper on the table.
"It has a second director.
Added four months ago."
Nico picked up the page.
His face didn't change.
But his hand, holding the paper, went very still.
He turned it so Adeline could see.
The second director's name was Dr.
Fenwick.
Nico's personal physician.
May you like
The man who had been managing his medical care for eight months.
The man who had prescribed every medication in that cabinet.
