Chapter 5 - THE CATERER'S SECOND STORY
The first time I heard Miles Gallo's voice after the engagement dinner, it came from a voicemail he left on my phone at 2:18 in the morning.
“Miss Parker, I know you think I tried to poison that child. I need you to understand—” He stopped. I heard traffic behind him, then a muffled voice speaking to someone nearby. “They said she would be fine. They told me it was controlled. I didn't know they had the medicine.”
The message ended there.
I played it once. Then I forwarded it to Detective Brooks and called Evelyn Park. She told me not to contact Miles on my own, no matter how badly I wanted to scream at him.
“His lawyer can arrange an interview,” she said. “You are not a detective, Emily, and your recovery matters.”
I knew she was right. Yet I lay awake imagining Sofia lifting her fork. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the red bag hidden in a catering van and thought about what might have happened if I had been a few seconds slower.
On Monday morning, the police located Miles at a motel outside Joliet. He agreed to come in with his attorney. They did not immediately tell us what he said. The investigation had entered that frustrating stage when everyone asked for patience and nobody could explain how patience helped a child who had nearly been harmed.
Matteo called that afternoon. He sounded different from the man at the head of the wedding table. Less certain that money and orders could force events into a shape he preferred.
“Sofia drew you another picture,” he said.
“Another chicken?”
“A cat this time. Apparently I'm the cat, and I have a very large head.”
I laughed. “Accurate?”
“Painfully.”
He paused. “Would you visit? Only if you want to. Margaret says Sofia won't stop asking when you're coming home.”
The word home troubled me. The mansion was where I worked, not where I belonged. And after Bianca's violence, the thought of walking through its tall doors again made my stomach tighten.
“I'll visit Sofia,” I said. “But I don't know whether I'm ever returning to that job.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He was silent for a moment. “I'm starting to.”
I arrived at the mansion with Lily the next day. Rafael met us at the entrance. There were new guards, new visitor records, and no flower arrangements from the engagement dinner. The ballroom doors were closed. A crew was repairing the shattered catering cabinet, and a bright notice warned staff that broken glass had been removed from food preparation areas.
The changes were necessary, but they also made me think about how little protection I'd had when it mattered.
Sofia ran toward us from the family sitting room, then stopped when she remembered my injuries.
“Can I hug you?” she asked.
“Gently.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist, careful of the bandages. I rested my cheek against her hair. She smelled like vanilla shampoo and colored pencils.
“I made you a get-well cake,” she announced.
Margaret appeared behind her. “She decorated it. I handled the oven.”
The cake was a little crooked, with pink frosting and a row of blue stars. It sat on a tray beside a bowl of sliced strawberries. Margaret explained that she'd prepared everything in a cleaned, separately checked kitchen with verified safe ingredients, following the child's care plan. No one was taking chances with Sofia's food now.
Sofia and Lily quickly became friends. They compared drawings while Matteo and I sat near the windows overlooking the garden. A pair of fallen leaves clung to the glass.
“Do you know where Bianca is?” I asked.
“She left the property after giving a statement to police. Her attorney arranged another place for her to stay. I've ended the engagement.”
“And Dario?”
“His access to foundation accounts is suspended under emergency procedures. We're seeking independent oversight. He keeps telling people I abandoned my family over a maid's lies.”
I looked at him sharply. “Is that what he thinks?”
“No.” Matteo's mouth tightened. “It's what he wants people to repeat.”
He slid a photocopy across the coffee table. It was a financial report showing a sequence of loans from Lakefront Horizons LLC to an entity called the DeLuca Recovery Partnership. The partnership's managing member was Salvatore DeLuca, Bianca's father. Repayment was scheduled from the proceeds of a proposed Harbor House transfer.
“The money was already promised before the building was sold,” Matteo said.
“They borrowed against something they didn't own.”
“That's the allegation. Our forensic accountant is tracing it.”
“What does Salvatore say?”
“He claims everything was legitimate and that Bianca misunderstood the medical recommendations. He's hired a public-relations firm to repeat that version.”
I thought about the voicemail from Miles. “Did you know his private caterer says the emergency was supposed to be controlled?”
“Detective Brooks told Rafael she had received your voicemail. They haven't shared the interview. I won't interfere with it.”
His restraint surprised me. There had been a time when he would have sent men to find Miles and demanded an answer. Now he waited for investigators, even as I could see how badly he wanted to act.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why are you being so careful?”
He looked toward Sofia, who was teaching Lily how to draw a six-legged cat. “Because I've spent years treating control as the same thing as safety. My daughter wasn't safe inside my own house. I need to understand the difference.”
That afternoon we visited the greenhouse where Elena had grown herbs for cooking. The roof panes were fogged from the heater, and the rosemary bushes filled the air with a clean, sharp smell. Sofia carefully watered the basil with Lily. Matteo and I walked along the narrow stone path.
“Elena used to say I needed to stop buying things I didn't know how to take care of,” he said. “Then she handed me a dying orchid and made me keep it alive.”
“Did it survive?”
“Barely. She gave me a certificate for exceptional effort.”
I smiled. “She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.”
He didn't say more, and I didn't push. Love for someone who had died could still occupy an entire room. I had learned that after losing my parents.
When we returned to the house, Evelyn was waiting in the front sitting room with a note from the detective. Miles Gallo had admitted that he prepared a seafood filling for the clearly labeled allergy-safe dish. He claimed Bianca's consultants assured him a private medical team would intervene immediately, and that the incident would be filmed for a proposed medical-care campaign. Investigators were independently checking his claim against messages and payments.
“A campaign?” I said, unable to keep my voice steady. “He was going to risk a child's life for a campaign?”
Evelyn's expression stayed grim. “He says he understood there was a risk, but believed it could be managed. That doesn't make his actions safe or acceptable.”
“Did he know the emergency bag was taken?” Matteo asked.
“He claims he did not. His account puts that instruction on a consultant whose name is still being verified.”
I looked at the initials on Nadia's invoice. “D.R.”
Evelyn nodded. “The company, DeLuca Resolution Group, provided the so-called incident-response plan.”
Rafael joined us with an additional detail. Investigators had obtained a warrant for the caterer's company records. An email contained a schedule broken into four phases: incident, ambulance departure, family statement, and beneficiary care petition. The emergency press release was phase three. The hospital-related petition had been drafted in phase four.
Matteo took a slow breath. “They planned to move Sofia somewhere private before I could talk to her own doctor.”
“That's what the documents suggest,” Evelyn said. “We still need to prove who approved each step.”
I remembered Sofia beneath the chandelier, a child who trusted adults to bring her food without hurting her. My throat tightened.
“She would have believed anything they told her if she woke up sick and frightened.”
Matteo turned toward the garden windows. “And I would have been terrified enough to sign whatever they put in front of me.”
He spoke it as a confession rather than an excuse.
Before leaving, I walked to the staff hallway to collect a few things from my locker. I wanted my old paperback, a photograph of Lily and me at the lake, and the spare apartment key I had left in my coat. Margaret accompanied me.
On the locker door was a new sheet of paper addressed to employees: medical leave available for injury, access to independent reporting, a review of staffing safeguards. I was relieved to see it, but uneasy that the notices existed only after someone had bled in front of forty witnesses.
“Make them follow through,” Margaret said when she saw me reading.
“I intend to.”
My phone vibrated. A message from an unknown number displayed a photograph of Lily walking away from her community-college library. Beneath it were six words.
SHE LEAVES CLASS AT FOUR TODAY.
A second message followed.
TELL MATTEO TO DROP THE PROPERTY CASE.
My knees went weak.
Margaret took one look at my face and called for Rafael. I forwarded the messages to Detective Brooks, then dialed Lily. She answered on the second ring.
“I'm in the campus security office,” she said. “They've already told me someone was asking about my schedule.”
For the first time since the dinner, I felt something colder than fear.
May you like
The people behind Bianca's plan had failed to harm Sofia. Now they were turning toward the family I had spent my life trying to protect.
And the next move would be mine to decide—not as a maid obeying orders, but as a witness who finally understood what silence could cost.
