Chapter 2 - What the Guests Pretended Not to See
The police were not called that night.
That fact stayed with Elena long after the bruises on Carlo’s face faded.
Nearly sixty people had watched a baby held over a fire pit and a family implode in the courtyard of a multimillion-dollar home outside Westchester County.
Yet within minutes, Viola was already issuing instructions to staff.
“Take the guests inside.”
“Clear the broken glass.”
“Tell the quartet to stop.”
By the time Matteo guided Elena and Luca through the front hall and into the east sitting room, the party had begun quietly reorganizing itself around denial.
Elena sat on the sofa with Luca in her lap, rocking him until his cries softened into exhausted hiccups.
Her hands would not stop shaking.
Matteo knelt in front of her.
“Did he touch Luca anywhere else?”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“Did Carlo hurt him before I got there?”
“No.”
That was the truth.
Carlo had terrified Luca.
He had not dropped him.
He had not burned him.
Yet Elena’s entire body still felt like it was bracing for something that had barely been prevented.
“He took him from me,” she whispered.
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
She had been walking near the fire pit with Luca on her hip when Viola stopped her in front of several relatives and asked, in that polished voice of hers, why Elena had still not “come to her senses.”
Elena tried to keep walking.
Carlo stepped in front of her.
Then, before Elena fully processed what was happening, he snatched Luca from her arms.
She screamed.
Viola told her to lower her voice.
And then Carlo moved toward the fire pit.
That part Luca would never remember.
Elena would.
Matteo stood.
Across the room, his father’s portrait hung above the marble fireplace.
Antonio Russo had built the family’s private-equity empire and died three years earlier, leaving control of Russo Capital to Viola and her sons.
Carlo inherited the visible authority.
Matteo inherited the expectation that he would fall in line.
Instead he left the firm and built his own logistics company.
That had been his first betrayal.
Marrying Elena had been the second.
Having a son who carried the Russo name without being raised under Viola’s control had become the third.
The sitting-room door opened.
Viola entered alone.
“Elena, I think you should take the baby home and calm down.”
Matteo turned toward her.
“You let Carlo put my son over an open fire.”
Viola didn’t flinch.
“No one was going to let anything happen to the child.”
Elena looked up sharply.
Then why had her heart nearly stopped?
Why had Luca been screaming?
Why had Carlo’s hands been under his ribs?
Why had Viola stood there like it was strategy?
Matteo stepped closer to his mother.
“You don’t come near my wife or my son again tonight.”
Viola held his gaze.
“Then perhaps you should finally tell your wife what all this is really about.”
Elena felt the room tilt.
Matteo’s face changed.
Just slightly.
But enough.
May you like
There was something he had not told her.
And Viola knew it.
