Chapter 8 - The Uncle Who Came to Dinner
Carlo Grimm arrived at the mansion that evening without invitation.
Before he came, Nicholas gave every staff member the option to leave through the rear security route. Nobody did.
Rosa said, “You paid us back. We’re staying for the show.”
Nicholas looked horrified.
Emily said, “Congratulations. They’re less scared of you.”
“I preferred efficient terror.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He looked at her. “You’ve known me one week.”
“Long week.”
That was when headlights swept across the windows.
The humor vanished.
Nicholas adjusted his cuffs. Dario checked the doors. Emily realized everyone had taken positions without being told.
This was the world Nicholas came from.
A world where dinner rooms became battlefields before anyone raised a weapon.
Carlo Grimm arrived at the mansion that evening without invitation.
He was sixty-two, silver-haired, elegant, and smiling.
“I heard there was trouble.”
Nicholas met him in the dining room.
Emily watched from the hallway with Dario.
Carlo poured himself wine.
“You look tired, nephew.”
“You look alive.”
“I usually am.”
Nicholas placed the photograph on the table.
Carlo’s smile disappeared.
Only for a second.
Then it returned.
“Old photograph.”
“Three months.”
“Then perhaps I age well.”
“Victor Morrow is alive.”
Carlo took a sip.
“So you believe.”
Nicholas leaned forward.
“I know.”
Carlo’s eyes moved toward the hallway.
He saw Emily.
“There’s the maid.”
Nicholas stood.
“She has a name.”
Carlo studied Emily as if she were a change in market conditions.
“Emily Turner,” he said. “Daughter of Thomas Turner. Nineteen years old. Mother deceased. No siblings. No meaningful assets.”
Emily’s stomach turned.
Nicholas’s voice dropped. “You researched her.”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“Because she walked into your house and within a week you handed police records your father spent thirty years protecting.”
Emily said, “Maybe the records shouldn’t have been protected.”
Carlo laughed. “There’s the American fairy tale. Truth makes everything better.”
“No,” Emily said. “Truth just makes lying more expensive.”
Dario looked down, hiding a smile.
Nicholas did not hide his.
Carlo noticed.
His expression cooled.
Nicholas stood.
“She has a name.”
Carlo smiled.
“Of course she does.”
Emily stepped into the room.
“Nineteen years old and already causing family wars.”
“I didn’t create your family problems,” she said. “I just survived one.”
Dario coughed into his hand to hide a laugh.
Carlo’s eyes sharpened.
He said, “Your father was also brave.”
Emily stopped.
Nicholas moved between them.
“You knew Thomas?”
Carlo shrugged.
“Everyone knew Thomas.”
“You knew he had evidence.”
“He had suspicions.”
“He had ledgers.”
Carlo put down the glass.
Then the charm vanished.
“Your father was weak, Nicholas.”
The room changed.
“He wanted to hand the family to lawyers and policemen because he suddenly discovered a conscience. Victor understood what would happen if that information came out.”
Nicholas stared at him.
“So you helped Victor.”
“I protected us.”
“You killed Thomas Turner?”
Carlo looked at Emily.
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“Victor.”
“And my father?”
Carlo’s silence answered.
Nicholas took one step forward.
Emily had never seen murder in someone’s face before.
Now she understood what it looked like.
She touched Nicholas’s sleeve.
He looked down at her hand.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
Carlo laughed.
“The maid thinks she controls you.”
Emily looked directly at him.
“No. I think he controls himself.”
That hurt Carlo more.
Police entered from both doors.
Nicholas had recorded the conversation.
Carlo’s face finally cracked.
“You brought cops into your father’s house?”
Nicholas looked around the dining room as if seeing it through someone else’s eyes. His father’s portrait hung above the fireplace. The same long table had hosted Christmas dinners, christenings, strategy meetings, and probably crimes nobody had ever named aloud.
“My father’s house,” Nicholas repeated. “That’s been the excuse for everything, hasn’t it?”
Carlo’s jaw tightened.
Nicholas continued, “Protect the house. Protect the name. Protect the family. Always protect the structure, even when the people inside it rot.”
Emily felt every staff member in the hallway listening.
Carlo said, “You sound like a boy who thinks morality will keep him alive.”
Nicholas answered, “No. I sound like a man tired of inheriting other people’s cowardice.”
“You brought cops into your father’s house?”
Nicholas replied, “My father died trying to clean it.”
Carlo lunged.
Not at Nicholas.
At Emily.
Nicholas intercepted him before his hand reached her.
Carlo swung.
Nicholas blocked the punch and drove one hard strike into his uncle’s jaw.
Carlo hit the table, sending wine across the white linen.
Nicholas did not hit him again.
He stepped back.
Police took Carlo.
Emily’s hands shook afterward.
In the kitchen, Maria pressed a mug of tea into her hands.
“You did not flinch,” Maria said.
“I absolutely flinched.”
“Inside does not count.”
Emily laughed weakly.
Nicholas came in ten minutes later with redness across his knuckles.
Emily looked at his hand. “Ice.”
“I’m fine.”
“You sound like every male patient who later needs stitches.”
“I don’t need stitches.”
Maria put an ice pack on the counter between them.
Nicholas stared at it.
Maria stared back.
The feared Mafia Boss picked up the ice pack.
Emily laughed so hard tea nearly came out her nose.
Nicholas looked offended.
“Enjoy yourself.”
“I am.”
For five minutes, the house felt almost normal.
Then Dario’s phone rang.
Police took Carlo.
Emily’s hands shook afterward.
Nicholas noticed.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
She looked at him.
“You wanted to kill him.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Nicholas stared toward the doorway where Carlo disappeared.
“Because you were right.”
“About what?”
“Power that can’t stop itself isn’t power.”
Emily looked away before he saw what that did to her.
Then Dario’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“What?” Nicholas asked.
Dario lowered the phone.
“Victor saw the arrest.”
“How?”
“He had eyes on the property.”
“And?”
“He sent a message.”
Dario showed the screen.
A photograph of the Grimm mansion.
Taken from the woods less than five minutes earlier.
May you like
Under it, one sentence:
NOW I KNOW WHICH GIRL MATTERS TO YOU.
