Chapter 7: The Trap Is Set
The camera went in Friday afternoon.
Gideon had a man he trusted — not staff, not anyone connected to the house — install a small weatherproof unit in the old stone wall at the south corner of the property.
It was angled toward the boathouse path and the narrow strip of gravel where a car could park without being seen from the main house windows.
The footage fed to an app on Gideon's phone and mine.
Rossella didn't notice.
She spent Friday at lunch with a woman I didn't recognize, someone who arrived in a car with out-of-state plates and left two hours later with a manila envelope under her arm.
I noted it and said nothing.
Gideon's lawyer, a quiet man named Carver, came Saturday morning under the cover of a routine property visit.
He and Gideon spoke in the study for ninety minutes with the door closed.
I kept Rossella occupied by asking her to clarify the household medication storage protocol — a question dull enough that she answered it with visible impatience and then dismissed me.
When Carver left, Gideon found me in Enzo's room.
"He's filing for an emergency competency evaluation," he said, low enough that only I could hear.
"An independent one.
Court-appointed.
It supersedes any private assessment."
"When?"
"He's submitting the petition Monday.
If the court grants it, the evaluation happens within ten days."
"Before January."
"Before January."
I looked at Enzo, who was reading in the armchair by the window and pretending not to listen with the focused dignity of a man who had spent decades in rooms where decisions were made about him.
"Does she know?" I asked.
"Not yet."
"She'll find out when the petition is filed."
"Yes."
"Then Harwell will move faster.
She'll want the forged assessment on record before the court evaluation happens."
Gideon nodded.
"Which means he comes back this week."
"Which means we need to be ready."
We didn't have to wait long.
Sunday night at 11:20, my phone lit up with a notification from the camera app.
Motion detected.
South perimeter.
I sat up in bed and opened the feed.
A car had parked at the end of the gravel strip.
The headlights went off.
A figure got out — tall, heavy coat, a bag in his right hand.
He moved along the path toward the boathouse with the ease of someone who had made this walk before.
I called Gideon.
He picked up on the first ring.
"I see it."
"He's going to the boathouse."
"I know."
"Don't go down there yet."
"Adeline—"
"Not yet.
We need him inside.
We need him to make contact with Rossella.
If you confront him in the dark on the path, it's just trespassing.
We need them together."
A long pause.
"How long?" he asked.
"Give it twenty minutes."
The twenty minutes were the longest of my life.
I sat on the edge of my bed watching the camera feed.
The boathouse door had opened and closed.
The man was inside.
At the twelve-minute mark, a light came on in the boathouse — faint, through the small window above the door.
At the fifteen-minute mark, Rossella's bedroom light went off.
I called Gideon again.
"She's moving."
"I see her."
"Now," I said.
"Go now."
I pulled on my coat and went downstairs.
Walter was in the kitchen.
He looked at me and then at the back door and then at me again.
"Walter," I said.
"I need you to do something.
I need you to come with me and I need you to be a witness.
Can you do that?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Yes," he said.
"I can do that."
We went out through the back and across the frost-hard lawn toward the boathouse.
The lake was black on our left.
The cold was absolute.
My breath came in short white clouds.
Gideon was already at the boathouse door when we reached it.
He looked at Walter.
Something passed between them — recognition, or relief, or both.
Then he opened the door.
Rossella was standing at the old wooden table in the center of the boathouse.
Harwell was beside her, a folder open in front of them both.
He was exactly as Enzo had described — tall, heavy coat, a medical bag on the floor at his feet.
They both turned when the door opened.
Rossella's face went through several things very quickly.
Surprise.
Calculation.
And then, settling over everything else like a mask being put on, contempt.
"Gideon." Her voice was smooth.
"You're up late."
"So are you," he said.
"Introduce me to your friend."
Harwell's hand moved toward his bag.
"Don't," Gideon said.
Quietly.
Completely without drama.
Harwell's hand stopped.
"His name is Phillip Harwell," I said from the doorway.
"His medical license was suspended in October.
He falsified your father's cognitive evaluation in September.
And whatever is in that folder is the second assessment — the one Rossella needs filed before the court petition goes through on Monday."
Rossella looked at me.
For the first time since I had arrived at the Marquetti mansion, her face did something I hadn't seen it do before.
It went uncertain.
"You have no idea what you're talking about," she said.
"The camera on the south wall has forty minutes of footage," I said.
"Including his arrival and yours.
Including the light in this boathouse window." I paused.
"Including this conversation."
Gideon reached into his coat pocket and set his phone on the table between them.
The recording app was running.
Rossella looked at the phone.
Then she looked at Walter, standing just inside the door.
"Walter," she said.
Her voice had changed.
Lower.
Something almost pleading in it.
"You've worked for this family for twenty-two years.
You know what my father would have wanted."
Walter looked at her steadily.
"Yes," he said.
"I do."
May you like
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't need to.
