Chapter 6 - Marina Broke Before Edmund Did
People like Edmund are practiced at denial.
People like Marina usually aren’t.
By dawn, she asked to speak to me privately.
I agreed—but only with my attorney present and two bodyguards outside the door.
She sat in the same study she had helped ransack only hours earlier, looking smaller somehow, without the beige-housekeeper composure she wore so well in front of guests.
“I never wanted Olivia hurt,” she said.
That was her opening line.
Not I’m innocent.
Not I didn’t know.
I never wanted Olivia hurt.
“Then why were you helping Edmund?”
Her eyes dropped.
“He told me the notebook belonged to the estate.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
“So why help him?”
She swallowed hard.
“Because Isabella hid things from you.”
I stared at her.
“Explain.”
Marina twisted her hands together.
“Mrs. Ventresca—your wife—knew something about your father. About Edmund. Maybe about some money too. I never saw everything. But I heard enough to know that she was frightened.”
“Then why betray her?”
Tears sprang into her eyes.
“Because Edmund said if I didn’t, he’d say I stole jewelry from your mother years ago. He had records. Or said he did. He told me I’d go to prison.”
I believed she had been coerced.
I did not believe coercion explained everything.
“You knew the notebook had been moved.”
She nodded once, defeated.
“Because I saw Isabella move it?”
“Yes.”
“Where from?”
“From behind the false panel in the cabinet.”
That stopped me cold.
The cabinet had a hidden compartment?
May you like
And I had never known.
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