250. 🐾 BRUNO KNOWS THE SECRET

Chapter 10 - Camilla Comes Home

Camilla Vitale stepped into my foyer as if she still owned the version of me that had once believed beautiful women made honest promises.

She wore a pale coat, red lipstick, and diamond earrings too delicate for the hour. Rain clung to the ends of her dark hair. Behind her stood two attorneys and a man with a medical bag, which told me she had come prepared to make lies look official.

“Dante,” she said, with the sorrowful smile of a woman arriving at a hospital bed. “I came as soon as Father called.”

Rocco stood behind me in the study doorway, guarded by Enzo but still dignified enough to appear annoyed rather than trapped.

Camilla’s eyes found Mara.

Then Sophie.

For half a second, satisfaction softened her face.

“There she is,” she said.

Mara pulled Sophie behind her.

Bruno growled.

Camilla looked at the dog with distaste. “Must that animal be here?”

“Yes,” I said.

She tried to smile again. “I heard there was confusion. Father said a woman in distress broke into your home with a child and began making claims.”

“A woman in distress?” Mara said.

Camilla ignored her.

One attorney opened a leather folder. “Mr. Moretti, given the hour and the presence of a minor, we have prepared an emergency petition for protective custody. The child’s mother appears unstable and—”

“Stop reading.”

He stopped.

Camilla’s smile thinned. “We’re trying to protect everyone.”

“No,” I said. “You’re trying to remove Sophie before morning because the banks open at nine.”

Her eyes sharpened.

There she was.

Not the former fiancée. Not the wounded daughter.

The strategist.

“You always did overestimate sentiment,” she said softly.

“And you always mistook patience for permission.”

She glanced toward Rocco. “Father?”

Rocco did not answer.

For the first time, Camilla realized he was not directing the room.

Mara stepped forward, still holding Sophie’s hand. “You told me Dante would trade her for the ledger.”

Camilla gave a small laugh. “I told you men are predictable. There’s a difference.”

I looked at her. “You approached Mara after the fire.”

“To save her.”

“To steal the medal.”

“To prevent a war.”

“A war over a five-year-old child?”

“A war over control,” she snapped.

The attorneys shifted. They had not expected honesty so soon.

Camilla regained herself and lowered her voice. “Dante, listen to me. Your father built a structure that cannot absorb a surprise heir without collapse. If Mara is Lucia’s daughter, if this child has standing, trustees will freeze accounts. Partners will panic. Federal interest will follow. Families who depend on you will suffer.”

“Families who depend on me,” I repeated.

“Hundreds of people.”

“Then we tell them the truth before someone else sells them a lie.”

She stared at me, bewildered.

“You would give up control?”

I looked at Sophie.

She was leaning against Bruno, exhausted, thumb stroking the bunny’s torn seam.

“I already lost control,” I said. “I’m trying to recover my soul.”

Camilla’s face hardened.

She turned to the man with the medical bag. “Doctor, the child appears distressed. Please evaluate whether removal is necessary.”

He took one step forward.

Bruno stood.

The doctor took one step back.

Enzo almost smiled.

Camilla and I had met at a charity dinner in Lake Como. I was twenty-nine and tired of being introduced to women who had already memorized the size of my fortune. She arrived late, wearing a navy dress without jewelry, and asked me why half the photographs on the walls showed donors instead of the children the foundation claimed to help.

I liked that question. Or liked what I believed it revealed.

For six weeks she ate breakfast at my table, borrowed books from my mother's library, and laughed with Mrs. Hartwell about the ridiculous names of racehorses. When I mentioned marriage, she said she wanted a life in which she could do meaningful work. I arranged a meeting with the foundation trustees. Two days later she asked for access to the trust documents. She said the charity needed to understand its funding.

Enzo was the one who noticed she had copied the succession chart. I accused him of being suspicious because he had never trusted anyone I loved. He told me that liking a woman's questions did not mean I understood her answers.

It was the only serious argument Enzo and I ever had.

When I confronted Camilla, she said she was hurt I would think her capable of such calculation. I apologized. Three days later I discovered she'd met with Rocco about the Moretti family voting rights without telling me. I broke the engagement, and she left for Italy.

Rocco assured me her absence would be best for everyone. I accepted that advice, too.

Now she stood in my foyer with a doctor, attorneys, and an emergency petition already prepared. The woman who had once pretended not to care about jewelry had spent seven years studying precisely which assets might pass to a child I had never known existed.

“You told me you were going to Milan,” I said.

She glanced at me. “I did go to Milan.”

“And came back to run the shell foundation in my sister's name.”

Her face changed almost imperceptibly. “It's not a shell. There are legitimate programs.”

“Then the children those programs serve deserve to know who's using their names.”

She moved closer, lowered her voice so Sophie couldn't hear. “Dante, you don't have to be cruel to me because you're ashamed you were deceived.”

A few years earlier, that sentence would have worked. I would have apologized for the harshness of my tone while she kept the documents. I knew the habit well: soften the argument, avoid the subject, let the woman I wanted to please decide where the conversation ended.

This time I looked past her toward the glass doors, where rainwater pooled from the shoes of men who believed she could command my house. “You brought strangers here to take a child from her mother,” I said. “Your feelings can wait.”

Her chin lifted. In the movement I saw the calculation fall away and something uglier take its place: contempt for the fact that I had stopped following the script she'd written for me.

Mrs. Hartwell emerged from the hall with a tray of tea as if we were receiving neighbors after church. She set it down on the foyer table and looked at Camilla over her glasses.

“Miss Vitale,” she said, “before you take any child from this house, perhaps you’ll explain why your driver has been knocking on her bedroom door for three months.”

Camilla went still.

That was the beauty of old servants. People dismissed them until they remembered everything.

Mrs. Hartwell placed a small black notebook beside the tea.

“I write down cars after midnight,” she said. “Bad habit from the old days.”

Enzo opened it.

Dates.

Times.

License plates.

Three months of them.

All tied to companies owned by Camilla.

Rocco whispered, “Camilla.”

His voice held not warning now, but betrayal.