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Chapter 11
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He Called It Love. I Called It Betrayal. Chapter 12
I returned to the city six weeks after the fire.Not to the Bennett house. Not to the island. Julian booked rooms near the courthouse, and my attorneys arranged transport that didn't belong to Dante.The first hearing I attended concerned the children and the disputed adoption records. The criminal proceedings would take longer. Vivienne remained in custody after the court considered the evidence and risks. There was no instant verdict waiting to tie a ribbon around what she'd done.Dante was in the hallway when I arrived.He stood as though an invisible hand had pulled him upright.“Elena.”I stopped beside my lawyer.He looked at the faint burn near my wrist, the cane I still used on bad days. His face changed.I remembered him looking at my bleeding knee outside the preschool.This time, he didn't get to tell me what had happened.“I need ten minutes,” he said.I gave him five, with counsel nearby.We sat in a conference room. He put a folder on the table.Not flowers. Not jewelry.
He Called It Love. I Called It Betrayal. Chapter 11
The children were interviewed after the medical team said they were ready.A trained interviewer met them separately in a quiet, child-friendly room, safely away from Vivienne.I wasn't allowed to feed them answers. Neither was Dante.That was as it should be.I received the appropriate summaries through counsel. Some details came later, when the children chose to tell me in their own time.Sofia remembered bitter milk. A hand at her nose. Being told not to tell Daddy because he would be angry that she'd made a fuss.Luca described pinching, his ear being pulled, and being told he was useless when Dante wouldn't stay.He still asked when he could see Vivienne.The therapist warned me that this wasn't proof he didn't love me, or that the harm hadn't happened. She was his familiar person. Losing her could frighten him even while being away from her made him safer.I wrote that down.When my feelings became too large, facts gave me somewhere to put my feet.The criminal investigation was
He Called It Love. I Called It Betrayal. Chapter 10
Sofia had been found shaking in bed, her lips discolored, her skin hot to the touch.Dante called an ambulance. He wanted to drive her himself, but the dispatcher kept him on the line until the paramedics arrived.Luca stood against the bedroom wall while they worked.A staff member stayed with him. Dante climbed into the ambulance with our daughter.I followed everything from a hospital room hundreds of miles away, one phone pressed to my ear while Julian spoke into another.The pediatric team told me she was critically ill but responding to treatment. They needed to establish what she'd been given and when.I asked them to repeat each sentence.If I understood the words exactly, I thought I might be able to keep her safe.Toxicology and the medication history suggested exposure to multiple drugs, including a sedating substance. The doses reported by Vivienne didn't account for what the clinicians were seeing.The doctors were investigating what she'd been given. Whatever had caused i
He Called It Love. I Called It Betrayal. Chapter 9
The investigators interviewed Dante in his hospital room.They asked where he'd been the night of the fire. He said Vivienne's house. The twins had slept beside him. Staff could confirm it.They asked about a transfer made two hours before the attack.One hundred thousand dollars, authorized from an account he controlled.The request had come from Vivienne.He said it was for Luca's school fees, therapy, and a deposit on next year's place. She'd told him it was urgent. He'd told his assistant to send the money.A hundred thousand dollars without an invoice.Once, I would have thought that impossible. Then I remembered how little attention he paid to the ordinary details of care. Other people handled those. His role was to make sure the card never declined.The investigators didn't accuse him simply because he'd paid. They asked who had requested the transfer, where it had gone, and what he knew about the people who ultimately received it.For a while, he defended her.“She wouldn't do
He Called It Love. I Called It Betrayal. Chapter 8
Dante tried to cross the fire cordon.A firefighter caught his arm. Another stood in front of him.“My wife is in there.”It was in the incident report: repeated attempts to enter an unsafe structure; distressed male claiming his spouse was missing.No title. No mention of the company, the boardroom, the employees waiting for his instructions.Just a distressed man who couldn't be allowed inside.They told him no confirmed fatality had been recovered. An injured woman had left in an ambulance, but they couldn't release patient information without verification.He clung to that.Then Vivienne arrived with the twins.Sofia was wrapped in a blanket against her shoulder. Luca followed, gripping the edge of her coat. A press photographer caught them in the background of a shot of the ruined building.My children should never have been there.Vivienne told Dante she was worried about him. He hadn't slept. Sofia needed her father. There was nothing he could do by standing in the rain.He refu
He Called It Love. I Called It Betrayal. Chapter 7
We couldn't remove the twins on my word alone.Not that morning. Not without locating them, presenting evidence, and getting an urgent decision from the people responsible for their safety.Julian's team filed an urgent request. They sent the hospital records and the adoption concerns to the appropriate authorities. They asked for a welfare check and warned that someone connected to the children's caregiver was being investigated over an attack on me.While adults exchanged calls, Vivienne found another way to keep Dante close.Sofia became ill.I learned the order of events from the pediatric records, the household staff, and, much later, the broken sentences my children managed in rooms designed to make them feel safe.Vivienne called Dante repeatedly until he answered.“She has a fever. Nearly a hundred and four. She's asking for you.”He drove straight there.Our daughter was flushed and drowsy, her lips dry. Vivienne sat beside the bed holding a damp cloth. A family doctor had bee
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