Chapter 6 - The Secret in the Yellow Rain Boots
The morning sun broke over Long Island with a cold, pale light that did nothing to warm the stone terraces of the Moretti estate.
Inside the master bedroom, the tension was thick enough to suffocate.
Vivian Romano sat at her mirrored dressing table, applying a fresh coat of crimson lipstick. Her hand didn't shake—she had spent her entire life being trained by Salvatore Romano to be ice under pressure. She knew Adrian was back. She had heard his footsteps pacing the corridor outside at three in the morning, slow and heavy like a predator circling a wounded deer.
She adjusted her silk collar, stood up, and turned to face the door just as it swung open without a knock.
Adrian stood in the doorway. He hadn't shaved. The dark stubble along his jawline made his hard, chiseled features look even more unforgiving. His eyes were completely flat, stripped of every ounce of warmth she had ever pretended to care about.
“Adrian,” Vivian said, pitching her voice to a note of delicate, fragile relief. She took two steps toward him, arms open, ready to fold herself into his chest. “Thank God. Nick told me you were flying in. I’ve been out of my mind with worry about Bruno. Have they found anything? The police—or Nick’s men—they’re looking everywhere, but—”
“Stop,” Adrian said.
The single word fell between them like a guillotine blade.
Vivian froze. Her arms hovered half an inch from his lapel. She forced a confused, hurt little smile to her lips. “Adrian? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Where did you put him, Vivian?” Adrian asked. His voice didn't rise. It remained dangerously, terrifyingly quiet.
“Put who? Bruno? Adrian, you know how much I—well, you know how difficult he was, but I would never—”
“I didn't ask if you liked him,” Adrian interrupted, stepping forward until she was forced to retreat against the edge of the mahogany dressing table. “I asked where your father’s men dumped him.”
Color vanished from Vivian’s face entirely now. The crimson lipstick looked like a slash of blood against chalk. She swallowed hard, her defensive facade beginning to crack at the seams. “My father? What does my father have to do with this? This is insane! You're letting your grief make you paranoid—you’re accusing me based on some wild theory—”
“It’s not a theory,” Adrian said, pulling a folded stack of high-resolution security stills from his inside coat pocket and tossing them onto the dressing table.
The photos landed right beside her perfume bottles.
The first showed a slender figure in a dark cashmere sweater turning off the estate’s main perimeter breaker. The second caught the glint of the diamond tennis bracelet on the wrist reaching for the switch. The third showed the black Lincoln Navigator with the Apex Holdings plates idling by the kitchen service entrance at 23:14.
Vivian stared down at the images. The silence in the room stretched until her breathing became ragged and shallow.
“You were photographing my ledgers for six months,” Adrian continued, his voice dropping an octave, each word measured like a blow from a hammer. “You were feeding shipping routes to your father’s men in New Jersey. And when you realized Bruno wouldn't let you near my private study while I was away in Chicago, you decided to get rid of him.”
Vivian’s eyes darted up, desperation finally breaking through the polished veneer. She reached out, her fingers catching the sleeve of his coat. “Adrian, please. Listen to me. My father forced me—he said if I didn't get the shipping manifests, he would cut me off, he would ruin us—it wasn't my idea to hurt the dog, they just said they’d take him to a farm upstate—!”
Adrian looked down at her hand on his sleeve as if it were a dirty insect. With a slow, deliberate motion, he peeled her fingers away from his fabric one by one.
“You made one mistake, Vivian,” Adrian said coldly.
Vivian’s chest heaved. “What? What mistake?”
Before Adrian could answer, a sharp knock echoed at the bedroom door.
Nick Caruso pushed it open without waiting for an invitation. He wasn't alone. Behind him stood Elena Rossi, holding little Mia by the hand.
May you like
Mia was wearing her yellow rain boots—still on the wrong feet—and clutching her stuffed rabbit. In her other small hand, she wasn't empty-handed anymore.
Nick stepped aside, and Mia stepped into the center of the master bedroom, her big, dark eyes fixing directly on Vivian Romano.
