Chapter 3

Viola was selecting place cards for the gala when she handed me the job of organizing the videos.

“Livia knows how to film things, not how to organize them.” She pushed a hard drive toward me. “Sort these out for her. Don’t bring anything inappropriate to the venue.”

I glanced at the drive.

“What counts as inappropriate?”

“Business matters. And all that crying of yours. Leave a little in, but too much is unattractive.”

Then she lowered her head to check the guest list again.

The charity foundation’s name was printed across the top. That evening, my father would announce a donation to build a boarding school for children who had lost both parents.

Livia would speak as a representative of adopted children.

And I was responsible for choosing background music for their display of respectability.

Back in my room, I locked the door and connected the drive to my computer.

The first folder was called “Family Memories.”

The earliest video had been recorded six years earlier.

In it, I stood in the middle of the study, surrounded by torn letters. Several handwritten notes my mother had left me lay scattered at my feet, their pages stained with ink.

I remembered that day.

Livia told me a cleaner had mistaken an old cardboard box for trash. By the time she rescued it, it was too late.

I cried so hard I couldn’t speak. She held me and told me she was sorry.

But in the video, she unscrewed the ink bottle herself and poured it into the box.

Behind the camera, Enzo asked, “What if she really cries?”

“Then film it.”

I paused the video.

On the screen, she tilted her face upward, laughing without the slightest restraint.

I sat there for a long time before pressing play again.

The next clip was from a family dinner.

Livia slipped a listening device into my bag, then discovered it in front of my father. That night, I was interrogated in the study for four hours, until Dario “pleaded” for me.

It turned out he had seen the device beforehand.

In the video, he leaned against the doorway and reminded her to dispose of the packaging properly.

At last, I understood why he had always urged me to let it go afterward.

He wasn’t afraid of damaging the family’s relationships.

He was afraid I would discover his part in it.

Instead of watching every clip, I contacted the lawyer first.

He told me to stop making changes to the original files. Someone Rosa sent would collect the entire drive. I was to keep only a working copy and note the times and locations of any suspicious files I found.

“Don’t rush to edit a story that will embarrass them,” he said over the phone. “First, preserve the material that can establish what happened.”

I did as he asked.

That afternoon, the drive was sealed in a document envelope and taken away. I sat at my desk and reopened the working copy.

The farther I went, the more casual the filenames became.

Birthday. Dress fitting. Dinner table. Docks.

The docks folder contained footage from the previous night.

It had been filmed from a car parked ashore. The warehouse lights illuminated me clearly, but the boat had already pulled away.

Off camera, someone asked, “Are we really lighting it?”

Then Enzo’s voice came through.

“Let her see the smoke first. If she doesn’t sign, give her more time.”

My fingertips pressed into the edge of the desk.

It wasn’t that the fire had suddenly gotten out of control and they’d failed to notice.

They had been watching all along.

At the end of the video, the person filming received a call and hurried away. The camera swept through the car, catching a name on an access pass.

I noted the file’s location and sent it to the lawyer.

Then, in another folder, I saw my own name.

“Elia—Pre-Wedding Arrangements.”

There were no engagement photographs. No church decorating plans.

Only several scanned agreements, a hotel suite reservation confirmation, and a video more than forty minutes long.

In the thumbnail, my father and Viola sat in the study.

My engagement documents lay on the desk.

Before I could click it, the door handle moved.

“Elia?”

Livia’s voice came from the hallway.

“How far have you gotten?”

I minimized the window and opened the gala’s opening sequence.

“I’m choosing music.”

“Make sure you keep the clips where you cry the hardest.”

She laughed on the other side of the door.

“Dad likes those. He says they feel really genuine.”

Her footsteps faded.

I waited until the hallway was completely quiet, put on my headphones, and opened the video.

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