Chapter 6: The Reckoning in the Drawing Room
Aldo closed the drawing room doors behind them.
The sounds of the party became muffled — the music, the voices, the gentle percussion of a celebration entirely unaware of what was happening thirty feet away.
Marcello sat across from Diane.
Elena stood near the fireplace.
Aldo took a chair by the door.
Diane placed her evening bag on the table.
Her hands were steady.
She had recovered quickly.
That, Marcello thought, was perhaps the most telling thing about her.
"You were never pregnant," he said.
"No."
"You went to Benedetti's office in March and told him you were carrying my father's child."
"I told him I was expecting.
I didn't specify —"
"You told him it was Father's," Elena said from the fireplace.
"Benedetti's assistant wrote it down."
Diane's jaw tightened slightly.
"That assistant misunderstood."
"She took dictation for twelve years," Elena said.
"She doesn't misunderstand."
"Diane." Marcello leaned forward.
"I have a letter my father wrote eleven months before he passed.
I have a recording made upstairs thirty minutes ago.
I have photographs being taken right now of the prosthetic you left in the wardrobe.
And in approximately ten minutes, Benedetti is going to answer the phone." He paused.
"What is it exactly that you think you can say to me that changes any of that?"
Something moved across her face.
Fast.
Gone.
Then she said something Marcello had not expected.
"I did care for him."
The room was quiet.
"I know you don't believe that," she said.
"I know what this looks like.
But I was with him every day for two years.
I sat beside him when he couldn't sleep.
I read to him when his eyes were too tired.
When the medication made him confused, I stayed.
I didn't leave." Her voice stayed even.
"I was not paid to do those things.
I did them because I wanted to."
"And then you tried to steal a million euros from his estate," Elena said.
"I thought I was owed something." The warmth dropped out of her voice like a stone into water.
Just like that.
The mask and the real thing, existing in the same sentence.
"Four years.
Two of them watching him deteriorate.
Do you have any idea what that takes from a person?
What it costs?"
"He gave you gifts," Marcello said.
"An apartment in the seventh district.
A car.
Money on a schedule that Benedetti documented."
"Gifts." The word came out with a texture to it.
"He gave your sister a house for her wedding.
He gave you two seats on the board of a company worth forty million.
He gave me an apartment I don't own outright and an allowance that stopped the day he closed his eyes." She leaned forward.
"I watched him die, Marcello.
I held his hand while it happened.
And three days later Benedetti called me and told me the arrangements for my future were — and I am using his exact word — modest."
Marcello said nothing.
"So yes," Diane said.
"I made a plan.
I was angry and I was frightened and I was not thinking about the law.
I was thinking about what I had given and what I was going to be left with." She sat back.
"That doesn't make me innocent.
I know that.
But it makes me something other than what you're looking at me like I am."
The fire shifted in the grate.
Aldo cleared his throat gently from the door.
"This is a very well-constructed statement," he said.
"And perhaps some part of it is even true.
But you forged a medical certificate from a clinic that no longer exists.
You purchased and wore a prosthetic pregnancy apparatus for a period of months.
You presented a false claim to an estate attorney with the specific intent of extracting funds you were not entitled to." He paused.
"Grief and anger are human things.
What you did is a different category."
Diane looked at Marcello.
"Are you going to call the police?"
"Yes," he said.
"Tonight."
"Yes."
She picked up her evening bag.
Set it back down.
Looked at her hands.
"May I at least be allowed to use the bathroom before you do?"
Elena moved away from the fireplace toward the door.
"Aldo will walk you."
Diane stood.
She straightened her dress.
She looked at Marcello one last time, and for one brief moment, beneath everything — beneath the plan and the calculation and the very well-constructed statement — something else surfaced in her expression.
Something that might have been real.
"He did love you," she said.
"He talked about you constantly.
You should know that.
Whatever else — you should know that."
Then she walked to the door and Aldo took her through it, and Elena pulled it shut behind them.
Marcello sat alone in the drawing room for a moment.
May you like
He looked at the letter in his hands.
Then he picked up his phone and called Benedetti.
