And I had just, without any of them knowing it, been invited to live inside the very house whose secrets I was about to trace.

Chapter 4 — Thirty-Two Years

The next morning I took Patricia to the emergency room, where a doctor confirmed a fractured cheekbone, and while we waited, my phone buzzed with two messages.

From Arthur: Come home.

We can make this disappear.

From Luca: You assaulted me.

Sign the postnup my father sends over, and we won’t press charges.

I read them both, and a cold, clear calm settled over me, and I looked at the fragile, shaking woman sitting beside me in that waiting room, and I asked her the question I already dreaded the answer to.