Chapter 6: The Table Between Them
Clara was standing when they came in — not sitting, not resting, just standing near the window with her arms crossed and her weight slightly forward, like someone who had learned not to get too comfortable in rooms that didn't belong to her.
She looked at Vincent.
Then at Vivian behind him.
Her expression didn't change, but her chin came up slightly.
Vivian closed the door.
"Sit down, Clara," Vincent said.
"I'd rather stand."
"So would I," he said.
"But my legs are tired." He pulled out a chair and sat.
After a moment, Clara took the one across from him.
Vivian remained by the door.
"I'm going to ask you some questions," Vincent said to Clara.
"And I need you to answer them honestly, even if the answers seem strange."
"Alright."
"Did anyone contact you before tonight?
About this party specifically?
About this family?"
Clara looked at him carefully.
"No.
The agency called me four days ago and offered the booking.
It paid well.
I said yes."
"Did the agency tell you who the client was?"
"They said it was a private event.
They gave me the address and the dress code."
"They didn't mention the Moretti name?"
"No."
Vincent nodded slowly.
He reached into his jacket and placed his phone on the table between them, screen up.
On it was a photograph — an older one, slightly faded, showing two women standing together in a sunlit garden.
Both were smiling.
Both wore lockets.
Clara leaned forward.
Her hand came up to her own locket without her seeming to realize it.
"The woman on the left," Vincent said, "is my mother, Lucia.
The woman on the right is your grandmother, Rosa." He paused.
"This photograph was taken in 1989.
I found it in my mother's things after she passed."
Clara stared at the photo for a long time.
"She looks like my mother," she said finally.
Her voice was steady, but only just.
"Yes.
She does."
From the door, Vivian spoke.
"This is very touching, but it proves nothing.
An old photograph.
A similar piece of jewelry.
Vincent, you are a man who has built a career on evidence, and this is not evidence."
"You're right," he said.
"It's not.
But it's a beginning."
"A beginning of what, exactly?"
He looked at her.
"Of understanding how your father's firm came to file an amendment to my mother's will two months after she d*ed."
The room went quiet.
Vivian didn't move.
But something behind her eyes did — a small, fast adjustment, like a calculation being revised.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"You knew Clara's name before tonight," Vincent said.
"You approved the staffing list.
The agency that placed her here is owned by a trust administered by your family's holding company." He set his phone face-down on the table.
"So I'll ask you directly.
Did you arrange for Clara to be here tonight?"
"That's an absurd accusation."
"Did you know who she was?"
"I told you—"
"Vivian." His voice didn't rise.
It dropped.
"I have known you for three years.
I know when you are performing.
Stop performing and answer me."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she walked to the third chair at the table and sat down.
She folded her hands in front of her.
She looked, for the first time all evening, like she was deciding something rather than managing something.
"I knew her name," she said finally.
"I didn't know she would cause a scene."
"You put her in the room."
"I wanted to see her.
That's all.
I wanted to know if she was what I thought she was."
"And what did you think she was?"
Vivian's eyes moved to Clara.
Something in them was not quite contempt and not quite fear — something in between, that had been sitting there all evening waiting to be named.
"A problem," she said.
"That needed to be managed before it became a larger one."
Clara's hands were flat on the table.
She didn't speak.
"The property in Calabria," Vincent said.
Vivian's jaw tightened.
"That property has been in legal dispute for over a decade.
My father's firm has been working to resolve it."
"By removing the rightful beneficiary from the will."
"By correcting a document that was added under duress by a woman who was dying and not thinking clearly."
"My mother," Vincent said, "was the sharpest person I have ever known.
She was thinking clearly until the last week of her life."
"She was grieving.
She was medicated.
She was being influenced by—"
"By whom?"
Silence.
"Say it," he said.
Vivian pressed her lips together.
"By Elena Reyes," she said.
"Who had been calling her for months.
Who had been telling her stories.
Who had convinced a dying woman to change her estate documents in favor of a family she hadn't seen in forty years."
Clara stood up.
"My mother," she said, "never asked anyone for anything.
Not once in her life."
May you like
"Sit down," Vivian said.
"I'm not your server anymore."
