Chapter 4 - A Lie Wrapped in LaceIsabella waited in the west sitting room like a woman receiving guests.
She sat on the edge of a velvet chair, ankles crossed, hands folded. A guard stood near each door. Rain blurred the tall windows behind her. Someone had taken away her phone, yet she looked less trapped than inconvenienced.
Marcus entered alone.
That surprised her.
Good.
He closed the door behind him.
“You wanted to speak.”
Isabella looked at his empty hands, then his face.
“Where is the child?”
“Safe.”
A faint irritation passed through her eyes.
“The child,” she said slowly, “may not be yours.”
Marcus did not react.
Isabella had expected violence or denial. Instead, he stood between her and the door, silent as stone.
She continued.
“Valentina was lonely, Marcus. You know that. You were gone often. Business. Meetings. Enemies. She spent time with people you did not approve of.”
“My wife is dead,” Marcus said. “Choose your next words carefully.”
“I am trying to protect you.”
“No. You are trying to survive me.”
Her face tightened.
Then she did something clever.
She cried.
Not dramatically. Just enough moisture gathered in her eyes to make cruelty look like pain.
“I loved Valentina,” she whispered. “She told me things. Things a wife does not tell her husband when she is afraid of him.”
Marcus stepped closer.
“Afraid of me?”
“She feared what you would do if the baby was not yours.”
The insult hung between them.
For years, men had tried to wound Marcus with threats, bullets, betrayal. Isabella knew the one place grief had made him vulnerable.
Valentina.
Marcus leaned down until his face was level with hers.
“Did you put him in the trash?”
Isabella’s tears stopped.
Only for a second.
But he saw it.
“I did not.”
“Did you know he was alive?”
“No.”
“Did you hide documents in your room?”
“No.”
“Did you speak with Dr. Whitmore after Valentina died?”
“I spoke with everyone. I managed the funeral while you sat in the chapel staring at the floor.”
There it was.
Contempt.
The real Isabella, peeking through the lace.
Marcus smiled faintly.
It made her afraid again.
“You were always most honest when you forgot to pity me.”
Isabella stood.
“I kept this house standing while you drowned in grief.”
“You kept it blind.”
“I protected your name.”
“You tried to erase my son.”
Her voice sharpened.
“You do not know that he is your son.”
Marcus turned toward the door.
“We will soon.”
Isabella moved quickly.
“Marcus.”
He stopped but did not face her.
“If you bring police into this, you bring them into everything. Your business. Your family. Your father’s old sins. Do you think they will stop at a baby? Do you think they will care that you are grieving?”
Marcus slowly turned back.
There was the real threat.
Not a denial.
A bargain.
“You should have led with that,” he said.
Isabella’s breathing changed.
He opened the door.
Renato stood outside.
“Keep her here.”
Isabella laughed softly.
“Renato knows more than you think.”
The hallway froze.
Renato’s expression did not change, but Marcus felt the temperature of the house shift.
He looked at his old consigliere.
Renato met his eyes.
“I have served this family for forty years.”
Isabella smiled through the doorway.
“Exactly.”
Marcus did not accuse Renato. Not yet. Betrayal needed proof, not theater.
But from that moment, Renato was no longer inside the circle.
He was standing at its edge.
Marcus returned to the nursery and found Lucia sitting in a chair near the crib, fighting sleep. Marisol stood behind her, looking embarrassed.
“I told her to wait in the servants’ room,” Marisol said quickly. “She would not listen.”
Lucia opened her eyes.
“Is the lady lying?”
Marcus stopped.
Children asked questions adults avoided because children still believed truth was supposed to matter.
“Yes,” he said.
Lucia nodded as if this confirmed something she already knew.
“She smelled like the blanket.”
Marcus stared at her.
“What?”
“The baby’s blanket,” Lucia said. “It smelled like flowers. Like Miss Cross.”
Marisol whispered, “Lucia, no.”
But Marcus’s eyes had sharpened.
“What flowers?”
Lucia thought for a moment.
“The white ones in the blue bottle. The one she sprays before dinners.”
Isabella’s perfume.
Rare. Imported. Custom blended. White jasmine and cold iris.
Marcus looked toward the crib.
The cream blanket was folded beside Dr. Levin’s bag.
He picked it up and lifted it carefully.
Under the sour smell of rain and garbage, faint but unmistakable, there it was.
White jasmine.
Cold iris.
Marcus closed his eyes.
Not in grief.
In confirmation.
When he opened them, the guard at the door spoke.
“Sir, we found something else in Miss Cross’s room.”
Marcus turned.
The guard held a small velvet pouch.
Inside was a pair of earrings.
Pearl drops.
Valentina’s earrings.
The ones she had worn to the hospital.
Marcus’s voice became deadly quiet.
“Where were they?”
“In Miss Cross’s nightstand.”
Marisol covered Lucia’s ears too late.
Marcus looked toward the west wing.
May you like
For the first time that night, he did not see Isabella as a suspect.
He saw her as an enemy.
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