Chương 3
“Who handled the gifts?” Giulia asked.
“Two of the bride’s cousins, the planner, and Mrs. Mercer’s assistant,” Francesca said.
“Which assistant?”
“Naomi Price.”
Elena knew Naomi as a quiet woman in her thirties who traveled with Celeste, remembered everyone’s dietary restrictions, and wore flat shoes regardless of the event. She had been seated near the ballroom doors.
“Where is she?” Elena asked.
Francesca checked her phone. “Her room key was used at the guesthouse nine minutes ago.”
Giulia told estate security not to stop Naomi from leaving. Elena turned toward her sharply.
“If we hold her without cause,” Giulia said, “we transform a contract problem into an unlawful detention problem.”
“She took the note.”
“Perhaps. Or a waiter threw it away.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I believe people become very imaginative when someone wealthy tells them a paper is important.”
Elena’s mother, Sofia, entered without knocking.
She had changed out of the silver dress she wore to the ceremony and put on a cardigan over a silk slip. At sixty, Sofia possessed an expressive face and no interest in hiding what it did. At that moment it held rage, fear, and a maternal desire to strike someone with a decorative object.
“Where is he?”
“Which one?” Giulia asked.
“The husband.”
“Not here.”
“Good.”
Sofia crossed to Elena and pulled her into an embrace so abrupt that the edge of the desk pressed into Elena’s thigh. Elena stiffened. Her mother smelled of rose perfume and wedding champagne.
“I knew that woman would do something,” Sofia said into Elena’s hair.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I knew she was wrong.”
“You said she was impressive.”
“I was trying to be generous.”
“You said I could learn from her.”
“That was before she tried to steal a vineyard.”
Giulia cleared her throat. “Nothing has been stolen yet.”
“Then why is my daughter still wearing a ring?”
Elena stepped away. “Please don’t.”
Sofia’s eyes fell to the envelope.
“Is his signature there?”
“His mother signed under a power of attorney.”
Sofia stared at Elena. “He gave her permission?”
“For other things.”
“There are no other things.”
“There are always other things,” Giulia said. “That is why powers of attorney exist.”
Sofia ignored her. “Your father would have canceled the marriage before the cake.”
“My father signed contracts without reading them when he was angry.”
“He read everything.”
“He signed the warehouse lease with the wrong square footage.”
“That broker lied.”
“He still signed it.”
Sofia’s face hardened, wounded less by the correction than by Elena’s refusal to sanctify the dead.
For seventeen months, everyone had spoken of Paolo Bellandi as if death had corrected him. His temper became passion. His controlling habits became vigilance. His refusal to discuss succession became devotion to the land. Elena had loved him. She had also spent half her adult life trying not to become him.
Sofia sat on the leather sofa. “The guests are leaving.”
“Good.”
“Some are asking whether the marriage is over.”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know.”
“I don’t.”
Sofia looked as if uncertainty were a moral weakness.
Giulia put the amendment into a clear document sleeve. “No decisions tonight. No signatures. No public statements. Elena speaks privately with Julian only if she wishes. Nobody confronts Celeste without me present.”
“I can confront her without you,” Sofia said.
“That is precisely why you will not.”
By midnight, the ballroom had emptied. The candles burned low in pools of wax. Staff cleared plates from tables where guests had barely eaten. Several older relatives remained in the courtyard pretending to wait for cars while trading details they could later claim to have witnessed firsthand.
A twelve-second video had already reached social media.
It showed Elena raising the envelope. It captured the accusation and Julian’s stunned face, then ended before Celeste’s confession. The caption claimed the groom had attempted to steal a centuries-old vineyard during the ceremony.
The vineyard was eighty-seven years old.
Elena watched the clip once on Giulia’s phone and handed it back.
“Can we remove it?”
“We can request removal. Copies will remain.”
“Who posted it?”
“A guest account with twenty-three followers. It now has forty thousand.”
“Which guest?”
“The account belongs to a cooking student in Milan.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“It may have been sent to her.”
Elena looked around her father’s study. “We invited people who sold our humiliation before dessert.”
“You invited people with phones.”
Giulia’s associate arrived from Florence with two laptops and a portable scanner. For the next two hours, the study became a temporary legal office. The wedding bouquet sagged in the pitcher. Elena changed into a robe brought by her mother but kept the pearl earrings because removing them required an effort she could not make.
Julian remained at the main house.
He sent no messages.
At one thirty in the morning, his attorney emailed a copy of the power of attorney Celeste had used. It had been executed three years earlier in New York and amended twice. The most recent amendment, signed by Julian six weeks before the wedding, expanded Celeste’s authority over transactions involving entities in which Julian might acquire a managerial interest.
Elena read the sentence twice.
Six weeks before the wedding.
Giulia enlarged Julian’s signature on the screen.
“This one is his,” she said.
“He said the authority was for financial documents.”
“That description is broad enough to be true and misleading enough to be useless.”
“Could he have signed without understanding?”
“Yes.”
“Would you?”
“No.”
“Would my father?”
Giulia hesitated. “Your father had his own methods of not understanding things.”
Elena went to the window. Outside, the vineyard descended in dark rows beyond the estate walls. Small work lights glowed near the fermentation building. Harvest was still weeks away, but mildew had appeared in two northern blocks, and the night crew was running fans to dry the leaves.
May you like
The vineyard continued to require decisions. It did not care that Elena’s marriage had lasted fewer than fourteen hours.
At two twelve, the accountant for the Mercer family office sent records showing that Julian’s mother had instructed outside counsel to draft the amendment. Celeste had described the transfer as part of an “agreed post-marital consolidation.” The counsel’s notes contained a reference to verbal approval from both families.
