Chapter 5 - Aunt Rosa Arrives Before Dawn
Rosa Caruso arrived at 4:37 in the morning.
She wore a camel coat over black trousers.
Her silver hair was perfectly arranged.
She looked like a woman arriving for lunch at a private club rather than being summoned to a mansion because a dead woman had accused her of possible betrayal on a thirty-year-old cassette.
Dominic waited in the drawing room.
I sat near the fireplace.
This time the poker stayed where it belonged.
Rosa entered.
She saw Dominic.
Then Marco.
Then me.
Then the cassette player.
Her face lost color.
“You found the room.”
Dominic stood.
Not a question.
A statement.
Rosa removed her gloves slowly.
“I wondered whether anyone ever would.”
Dominic’s voice became dangerously calm.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“For thirty-one years?”
“Yes.”
“You told me it had been demolished.”
“Your father told you that.”
“And you let me believe him.”
Rosa closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Dominic turned away.
I could see him fighting the kind of anger that did not need shouting.
“Did you betray my mother?”
Rosa opened her eyes.
“No.”
“The recording says she told you.”
“She did.”
“Vittorio found out two days later.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Rosa looked toward the fire.
“Because I made a mistake.”
Dominic waited.
“I confronted your father.”
His expression hardened.
“I told Franco that Maria was terrified.”
“I demanded that he listen to her.”
“Vittorio was in the study next door.”
“He heard enough.”
Marco swore quietly.
Rosa continued.
“Your mother knew by dinner.”
“She came to me that night.”
“She gave me instructions.”
Dominic stepped closer.
“What instructions?”
“To protect you.”
“From whom?”
“Everyone.”
That answer hurt him.
It showed.
Rosa reached into her handbag.
She removed an old silver key.
“I was supposed to give you this when you were twenty-five.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because by then you had become exactly what your father wanted.”
Dominic stared at her.
Rosa did not flinch.
“You were angry.”
“You wanted revenge for Gabriel.”
“You believed the Morettis killed him.”
“You were taking control of the family.”
“If I gave you Maria’s evidence then, I believed you would start a war inside your own house.”
“So you lied.”
“Yes.”
“For my protection.”
“No.”
Rosa’s voice broke for the first time.
“For my cowardice.”
The room went silent.
She looked at me.
“I hired Claire because the west wing needed inspection.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“That isn’t the whole truth.”
Rosa almost smiled.
“No.”
Dominic noticed.
“What aren’t you saying?”
Rosa looked at me again.
“Claire’s company restored the Bellweather estate two years ago.”
I remembered that job.
A mansion with hidden servant corridors and three generations of bad electrical decisions.
“You found a concealed pantry nobody had documented for seventy years,” Rosa said.
Dominic’s eyebrows lifted.
“You hired her because she finds hidden rooms?”
“I hired her because she notices what families stop seeing.”
I stared at Rosa.
“You expected me to find Maria’s room.”
“I hoped you might.”
“Why not just tell Dominic?”
Rosa looked toward her nephew.
“Because I needed the discovery to happen without warning anyone else.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
Before Rosa could answer, every light in the mansion went out.
The security panel died.
The fire became the only light in the room.
Marco immediately stood.
Dominic reached for me and pulled me behind him.
Outside, somewhere beyond the rain-covered windows, glass shattered.
Then came three quiet knocks from the west corridor.
May you like
Rosa whispered,
“They know.”
