PART 2

By midnight, the house had settled into the quiet rhythm of sleeping people.

I remained in my study with the lamps turned low, listening to rain tap against the tall windows. The sound should have been peaceful. Instead, every drop seemed to mark the passing of time.

Somewhere upstairs, Vivien slept beneath the same roof as me.

Or pretended to.

Rocco stood near the fireplace, holding a thin folder between two fingers.

He had worked for my family long enough to know when silence was more useful than speech. Usually, he was calm in a way that made other men uneasy. Tonight, even he looked thoughtful.

“You found something,” I said.

“Several things,” he replied. “But none of them explain everything.”

“Start with what you can prove.”

Rocco opened the folder.

“For the last three months, Vivien has been receiving payments from a consulting firm called Bellwether Advisory.”

I leaned back in my chair.

“Do they have an office?”

“They have a registered address. A rented mailbox in a business center. No employees listed beyond a secretary who has never met Vivien.”

“How much?”

“Small transfers. Regular ones. Every Friday.”

He placed a sheet on my desk.

The amounts were modest enough to avoid attention—five hundred here, eight hundred there. Not the kind of money that suggested a criminal operation. More like a personal allowance, carefully divided into payments too ordinary to raise questions.

“Who owns Bellwether?”

“A holding company. That holding company belongs to another holding company.” Rocco paused. “We followed the chain as far as we could without alerting anyone.”

“And?”

“The final name disappears behind a trust registered in Switzerland.”

I studied the page.

A secret payment could mean many things. Debt. Blackmail. A private family obligation. A business arrangement Vivien had concealed from me.

But it did not explain Elena.

“Anything connected to the house?”

Rocco turned to another page.

“Two weeks before Bellwether began paying her, Vivien hired a private security consultant to inspect the property.”

I looked up.

“Without telling me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She told the consultant she was worried about safety.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“It would,” Rocco said, “if the inspection had been for the gates or the cameras.”

He slid a photograph across the desk.

It showed a man in a dark jacket standing near the rear entrance. I recognized him vaguely. He had appeared at the house once or twice, always carrying a leather case.

“What did he inspect?”

“Not the security system. The staff routines.”

My fingers tightened around the photograph.

“Explain.”

“He asked when the household emptied for dinner. Which rooms were locked. Who had keys. When Elena took Mia outside. Whether you ever visited the nursery.”

The room seemed to grow colder.

“Did anyone answer him?”

“Mrs. Bellini did. She thought he was conducting a standard property review.” Rocco’s expression hardened. “He also spoke with Vivien in the garden.”

“Did she know he was asking about Elena?”

“No one knows what they discussed.”

I stood and walked toward the window.

Below, the garden lights shimmered on wet stone. The mansion looked beautiful from the outside—warm, ordered, protected. But I had begun to understand how easily a house could become a maze when its inhabitants kept secrets.

“Where is the consultant now?”

“Gone. He closed his business two weeks ago.”

“Find him.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

Rocco accepted the rebuke without reacting.

After a moment, he said, “There’s something else.”

I turned.

“Several employees have noticed that Vivien spends time in the old west wing.”

“That wing is closed.”

“Exactly.”

The west wing had been unused since my father died. Its rooms were dusty, its furniture covered in linen, its windows rarely opened. My mother had kept a small private office there, but after her stroke, she moved to the southern apartments where the halls were brighter and easier to navigate.

“Did Vivien have a key?”

“She requested one from the housekeeper.”

“Why?”

“She said your mother had asked her to retrieve family documents.”

“My mother never told me.”

Rocco looked down at the papers.

“I checked the room.”

My attention sharpened.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing obvious. But the desk had been used recently. There was dust on the floor except near the left drawer.”

He placed a second photograph on the desk.

It showed an old wooden desk with one drawer slightly open.

“Did you search it?”