Chapter 2 - THE MAN LILY CALLED UNCLE
Leo had no brothers.
That was the first problem.
The second was that Lily called three men “uncle.”
Mateo Calder was one.
Father Dominic Rossi, Leo’s cousin and the family priest, was another.
The third was Adrian Rossi.
Leo’s father’s youngest brother.
The only living member of the old Rossi generation.
Adrian came to dinner twice a month.
He brought Lily books, never toys.
He kissed Victoria’s hand because he believed manners were useful camouflage.
And he had once commanded Rossi Security before Leo took control.
The silver button on the kitchen floor could have belonged to any uniform from the old division.
But only one of Lily’s “uncles” had built the division.
Adrian.
Leo did not say the name in Lily’s bedroom.
He waited until the child slept again.
Then he walked into the east study and locked the door behind him.
Victoria Kensington stood beside the fireplace in a borrowed robe.
Someone had taken her wine.
That seemed to offend her more than the armed guards.
“You kept me waiting.”
Leo crossed the room.
“You locked my daughter in a cellar.”
Victoria’s face tightened. “I was trying to frighten her.”
“She could have died.”
“I didn’t know her asthma was that severe.”
“You had her inhaler.”
The color drained from her face.
Leo saw it.
Mateo closed the door behind them.
Beatrice remained outside.
Leo had asked her to return to her room.
She had ignored him.
She sat on a bench in the corridor, ribs taped, fingers bandaged, listening through the wood because someone had nearly killed a child she loved and she no longer cared about staff rules.
Inside, Victoria said, “I found the inhaler on the floor.”
“Lie better.”
“Leo—”
“Why did you want Isabella’s key?”
Silence.
Beatrice leaned closer.
Victoria finally spoke.
“Your wife hid something before she died.”
Leo’s voice changed. “What?”
“I don’t know.”
“You tried to kill my daughter for something you don’t know?”
“I did not try to kill her.”
“You removed her inhaler.”
“I wanted Lily to tell me where Isabella put the key.”
“Why?”
Victoria’s voice sharpened.
“Because my father received a message last week.”
Mateo asked, “From whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“What message?”
“A photograph of Isabella standing outside Union Station three days before the bombing.”
Leo went silent.
Victoria continued.
“On the back someone wrote: LOCKER NINETEEN WILL BURY TWO FAMILIES.”
Beatrice’s heart beat faster.
Rossi.
Kensington.
Two families.
“Your father sent you here for the key,” Leo said.
“No.”
“Victoria.”
“He told me to find out if the key still existed.”
“So you tortured a six-year-old.”
“I lost control.”
Mateo laughed once.
It was a dangerous sound.
“You locked a child in a freezing cellar and held her medicine. That is not losing control. That is making several decisions in sequence.”
Victoria’s voice broke.
“You think I wanted this?”
Leo replied, “I stopped caring what you wanted the moment Lily turned blue.”
Beatrice heard footsteps.
Then the sound of a chair moving.
Victoria said, “You need me.”
“No.”
“You do. Because the man who helped me was not sent by my father.”
Beatrice froze.
Mateo’s tone sharpened. “Who was he?”
Victoria hesitated. “He wore one of your security coats.”
“Name.”
“I didn’t see his face.”
“Convenient.”
“He approached me in the west corridor. He said he knew about the key. He knew Lily had the rabbit.”
Leo said, “How?”
“I thought my father sent him.”
“Why?”
“He used a phrase only my father’s people use.”
“What phrase?”
Victoria’s answer came quietly.
“Keep the bloodline clean.”
The hall seemed colder.
Beatrice did not know what it meant.
Mateo did.
He opened the study door so abruptly she nearly fell off the bench.
He looked at Leo.
“Adrian.”
Leo’s face was stone.
Beatrice stood. “You know the phrase?”
Mateo nodded.
“Old Rossi code.”
“For what?”
Neither man answered.
Victoria appeared behind them.
For the first time she looked genuinely afraid.
“It has nothing to do with my family?”
Leo looked at her. “No.”
“Then who helped me?”
A guard’s radio crackled.
“Mr. Rossi, we have a breach.”
Mateo grabbed the radio.
“Where?”
“North gate. Camera looped.”
“Any vehicle?”
“None.”
Leo looked at Beatrice. “Go to Lily.”
She did not argue.
She ran.
Pain tore through her ribs.
She ran anyway.
Lily’s bedroom door was open.
Too open.
The two guards who had been stationed outside were gone.
Beatrice’s stomach dropped.
“Lily!”
She rushed inside.
The bed was empty.
The oxygen monitor lay on the floor.
The window stood open.
Cold night air pushed the curtains inward.
For one second Beatrice could not breathe.
Then she heard a small scrape.
Closet.
She crossed the room and pulled the door open.
Lily sat inside, hugging Rabbit.
A young guard crouched beside her.
His gun was drawn.
Beatrice recognized him.
Evan Holt.
Twenty-three.
One of the new security hires.
He raised a finger to his lips.
“Someone came through the window.”
Beatrice stared.
“Where?”
“Bathroom.”
He pointed.
A shadow moved.
Beatrice grabbed Lily and pulled her behind the bed.
A man in black burst from the bathroom.
Evan fired once.
The man ducked.
Glass shattered.
Lily screamed.
Beatrice threw herself over the child.
A second shot exploded.
Then Mateo hit the intruder from the side.
They crashed into the dresser.
Leo entered behind him.
The fight ended fast.
Too fast for Beatrice to follow.
The intruder was pinned on the carpet, face against the floor.
Mateo ripped off his mask.
Everyone stopped.
The man was one of Rossi Security’s senior captains.
Paul Danner.
He had worked for Leo for eleven years.
Leo stared at him.
“Why?”
Danner laughed through blood.
“You already know.”
Leo’s face darkened.
“Adrian?”
Danner said nothing.
Mateo twisted his arm.
Danner hissed. “Careful. You break that, I sue.”
Mateo almost smiled. “You can try.”
Lily began crying.
Leo turned immediately.
The ruthless man vanished again.
He went to his daughter.
Beatrice had her wrapped in both arms.
Lily clung to Beatrice’s neck.
“Bee, don’t let them put me downstairs.”
“No one will.”
Beatrice looked at Leo.
“Tell her.”
Leo knelt.
“No one is taking you anywhere.”
Lily looked at him. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
Danner laughed from the floor.
“Promises.”
Leo turned.
Something in his face made Beatrice afraid for the man.
Not because she pitied him.
Because she had seen what Leo looked like as a father.
Now she saw what he looked like as a boss.
“Take him below,” Leo said.
Beatrice’s spine tightened.
Below.
The same cellar.
Mateo understood her expression.
“Not that cellar.”
Still, she did not like it.
Leo noticed.
“Police room.”
She blinked. “The what?”
Mateo answered, “Security interview room.”
“Why call it below?”
“Because it is below.”
“Your family names things badly.”
Despite everything, Lily hiccupped a laugh.
Leo looked at Beatrice.
Something changed in his eyes.
Gratitude.
Maybe surprise.
He had probably never imagined someone would criticize his vocabulary while an armed traitor bled on his daughter’s carpet.
The doctor returned to check Lily.
Danner was taken away.
The bedroom became quiet.
Then Beatrice remembered something.
“When I was in the laundry corridor…”
Leo looked at her.
“The man who grabbed me had gloves. Danner wasn’t wearing gloves when you caught him.”
Mateo frowned. “Could have removed them.”
“He smelled different.”
Leo’s eyebrow lifted.
Beatrice felt ridiculous.
“Cologne.”
Mateo took it seriously.
“What kind?”
“Cedar. Smoke. Something expensive.”
Leo and Mateo exchanged a look.
“What?”
Leo said, “Adrian wears the same cologne my father wore.”
Beatrice felt cold.
Lily looked up.
“Uncle Adrian smells like Christmas fire.”
No one moved.
That was enough.
Leo took out his phone.
He called Adrian.
Straight to voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
Mateo called the gatehouse.
“Find Adrian Rossi.”
A guard answered.
“He left the city this afternoon.”
“Where?”
“Private plane filed for Milwaukee.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed.
Union Station locker.
Chicago.
The bombing.
Isabella.
Why Milwaukee?
Beatrice was still thinking when Lily tugged her sleeve.
“Bee.”
“Yes?”
“Mama had another rabbit.”
“What?”
“A little one.”
Leo crouched. “Where?”
Lily pointed toward the bookshelf.
Behind a row of picture books sat a tiny ceramic rabbit.
Beatrice lifted it.
Something rattled inside.
Mateo examined the base.
A felt pad peeled away.
Inside was a rolled strip of paper.
Leo opened it.
Isabella’s handwriting.
He read silently.
His face changed.
“What does it say?” Beatrice asked.
Leo handed her the paper.
If Leo is reading this, then I failed.
Do not trust Adrian with Locker 19.
He knows what happened to the Kensington girl.
Victoria gasped from the doorway.
“What Kensington girl?”
Beatrice looked up.
Victoria had gone completely white.
Leo turned the note over.
There was one more line.
Ask Conrad why he buried his first daughter without a body.
Victoria’s knees nearly gave out.
“My father had one daughter,” she whispered.
“No,” Leo said.
His voice was quiet.
“Apparently he had two.”
By noon, the entire Rossi estate had been divided into zones.
Mateo ran security checks from the command room.
Every employee badge was suspended.
Phones were collected.
Vehicles searched.
Beatrice watched from Lily’s doorway as housekeepers whispered in the hall.
Some looked frightened.
Some offended.
One woman, Clara from laundry, caught Beatrice’s eye.
“You all right?”
Beatrice nodded.
Clara looked toward the stairs.
“They think one of us helped.”
“One of security did.”
“That doesn’t mean staff didn’t.”
Beatrice heard the hurt beneath the sentence.
The people who cooked, cleaned, folded, polished, and repaired were always the first group searched when wealthy families discovered betrayal.
She understood why.
She also understood what it felt like.
“Did anyone see Victoria before the cellar?” Beatrice asked.
Clara frowned.
“She was in the west hall with Mr. Hale.”
“Who?”
“Kensington lawyer. Older man.”
Beatrice’s pulse shifted.
“What time?”
“Maybe seven.”
Before the attack.
“Did he wear a coat?”
“Gray.”
“Buttons?”
Clara thought.
“Silver.”
Beatrice found Mateo.
“Richard Hale.”
Mateo stopped typing.
“What about him?”
“Clara saw him with Victoria.”
“Victoria said the man wore a security coat.”
“Maybe he changed.”
Mateo’s expression hardened.
“Why would Kensington’s attorney have access to Rossi uniforms?”
“Ask Victoria.”
They did.
Victoria denied it.
Then admitted Hale had come to discuss her father’s message.
Then denied knowing where he went afterward.
Leo stood behind the chair.
“Every truth from you arrives after three lies.”
Victoria looked at him.
“That is how people survive around men like our fathers.”
“Do not make yourself Evelyn.”
The name hit her.
She went quiet.
Beatrice watched the exchange.
For the first time, she saw Victoria not as a beautiful monster but as a woman trained by another kind of monster.
It did not excuse Lily.
Nothing could.
But explanation was not absolution.
Beatrice was beginning to understand the difference.
That evening, Lily asked Beatrice whether bad people knew they were bad.
Beatrice tucked the blanket around her.
“Sometimes.”
“Victoria?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you hate her?”
Beatrice paused.
“No.”
Lily looked surprised.
“She hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“She hurt me.”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
“Because hate is a lot of work.”
Lily considered that.
“What do you feel?”
“Angry.”
“That’s different?”
“Anger tells me something was wrong. Hate can make me want someone to stop being human.”
Lily hugged Rabbit.
“Victoria is still human?”
“Yes.”
“That’s annoying.”
Beatrice laughed.
“Yes.”
The child closed her eyes.
“Bee?”
“Yes?”
“If Uncle Adrian is bad, does that mean Daddy is bad too?”
Beatrice looked toward the doorway.
Leo stood outside.
He had heard.
She did not rescue him.
That was not her job.
“Ask him,” she said.
Leo entered slowly.
Lily looked at her father.
“Are you bad?”
The question would have terrified most adults.
Leo sat beside the bed.
“I have done bad things.”
Lily’s eyes widened.
“Why?”
“Because I thought they were necessary. Sometimes because I was angry. Sometimes because I wanted people afraid.”
“Are you sorry?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re good?”
Leo glanced at Beatrice.
She stayed silent.
“No,” he said. “Being sorry does not erase what I did.”
Lily frowned.
“Then what?”
“I try to do better next.”
The child thought.
“Okay.”
That was all.
Children sometimes accepted complexity more easily than adults because they had not yet learned to demand clean categories.
Beatrice looked at Leo.
He looked back.
No forgiveness passed between them.
May you like
Only truth.
For that house, it was revolutionary.
