Chapter 13
Evelyn did not take the key.
“It's your marital home,” she told Luca, “but we need to handle personal documents lawfully. Don't search Bianca's private files on my instructions.”
Luca hesitated, then showed her a photograph already on his phone. He said Bianca had left the draft on their shared printer weeks earlier, and he'd photographed it because her proposed wording frightened him.
The document requested court approval for a long-term residential arrangement. It described Luca as overwhelmed and Theo as a danger to himself and others. The pages were unsigned, and Evelyn was careful not to treat a draft as a filed pleading.
Still, it showed a level of planning inconsistent with Bianca's claim that the Christmas Eve incident had been spontaneous.
Luca said he had seen Vincent reviewing similar papers at the mansion in November.
“Did you object?” Evelyn asked.
“I asked why they needed so much documentation. Vincent said courts like proof that a child has tried less restrictive alternatives.”
“What did you understand the cold exposure to be?”
“A behavior exercise. Bianca said she had been trained.”
“Did she tell you who trained her?”
“She said Summit had.”
The room went still.
Evelyn asked Luca to describe only what he knew personally and arranged for his attorney to coordinate a formal statement. He was implicated in the conduct and needed independent advice; a confession obtained through pressure would help no one.
Luca's attorney also explained a difficult truth: admitting wrongdoing would not automatically repair his standing as a parent. The agency might require sustained work, and there might be limits on contact for as long as Theo needed them. Luca asked whether the judge would ever understand that he had been manipulated.
“Perhaps,” the lawyer said. “But you were the adult who could open the door.”
Luca studied the photograph of the draft petition. He remembered Bianca sliding papers across the kitchen table while Theo sat at the far end, too quiet to interrupt. He had signed with the confidence of a man who thought specialists had taken responsibility off his shoulders.
Now he understood that authority could be delegated, but responsibility for a child could not be signed away. He asked his lawyer how to correct the false statement he had previously made. The lawyer began arranging an accurate disclosure.
At the trust proceeding, document production continued in stages. Accounts showed that Vincent had authorized several consulting payments. It was not yet clear whether services had been performed, but the invoices repeated identical descriptions across different dates. Two charges supposedly covered in-person meetings with Theo on days school records showed he had never left Aspen.
Evelyn flagged them for the trust's court-appointed financial reviewer.
Dante wanted to drive straight to Vincent's Denver office.
“Don't,” Evelyn said before he spoke.
“I wasn't going to.”
“You were putting on your coat.”
“I was cold.”
She gave him a flat look. He sat back down.
Elsewhere, Bianca's attorney urged her to stop contacting potential witnesses. She ignored the advice and left Rosa a voicemail saying that if Rosa kept talking, she would never work in a private home again. Rosa preserved the message and forwarded it to investigators.
The threat didn't make Rosa brave overnight. She cried in her parked car before walking into the agency building for another interview.
“I keep wondering whether Theo was calling while I was washing dishes,” she told Hannah.
“You can tell us what you know,” Hannah replied. “You're not responsible for inventing what you didn't hear.”
Theo, meanwhile, had begun using a small notebook to write questions for his next therapy session. He asked whether nightmares meant the bad things were happening again. He asked whether missing his father meant wanting to live with him. He asked whether grown-ups could be sorry without being safe.
His therapist told him yes to the last question, then explained that apologies and safety were different things.
When Dante learned that Theo wanted to see him at the guesthouse, he arranged the approved visit through Hannah. The boy walked from room to room with his airplane tucked beneath his arm. He tested the door latch twice. Then he chose a blue blanket from three options.
“Can I leave it here?” Theo asked.
“Yes.”
“Even if I don't live here?”
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to lift something from his shoulders.
After Theo left, Dante found a folded paper on the desk. It showed an airplane above a square with the words I CAN SAY NO.
May you like
Dante thought he had reached the most important discovery of the day.
Then Evelyn called to say the financial reviewer had identified a company registration linking Summit Path's billing contractor to Vincent Marlowe himself.
