Chapter 2
Leo did not want to talk about the garden.
Serafina let him refuse.
Dr. Camille Brooks, the child psychologist recommended by the pediatrician, explained why.
“Adults want chronology. Children want safety.”
Serafina sat across from her.
“I need to know whether Nolan has done this before.”
“You need adults to investigate that.”
“What do I ask Leo?”
“What he needs tonight.”
That answer felt painfully inadequate.
Serafina followed it anyway.
Leo wanted his bedroom door open.
Mia wanted to sleep in the room across from him instead of her own wing.
Serafina moved a mattress.
No one argued.
The next information came from staff.
A driver remembered Nolan taking Leo to the back lawn twice during the previous month.
A groundskeeper saw the boy doing push-ups while Nolan stood over him.
A housekeeper heard Nolan call Leo “soft.”
One event security guard remembered something worse.
Leo had been crying.
Nolan told him:
“Your mother is not coming every time you make noise.”
Serafina read the statement twice.
The language sounded familiar.
Victor had used versions of it when Serafina was young.
Bellandi children were taught that emotion was private.
Pain did not interrupt adults.
Fear was embarrassing.
The family called it resilience.
Serafina had spent years quietly removing those rules from her own household.
Apparently Nolan had been putting them back.
Mia eventually spoke to Camille during a drawing session.
Not about being shoved.
About Leo.
“Uncle Nolan makes him practice not calling Mom.”
Camille kept her voice neutral.
“What kind of practice?”
Mia drew a large rectangle.
“Leo stays outside.”
“Outside where?”
“Mom’s office.”
“And what happens?”
“He has to wait.”
“For how long?”
Mia shrugged.
“Until Uncle Nolan says.”
Serafina heard about that later.
She checked the estate access logs.
Three times in six weeks, Leo had entered the administrative corridor while Serafina was working.
Three times, Nolan’s badge appeared there within minutes.
Serafina remembered only one interruption.
Leo had come into her office asking whether he could go swimming.
The other two times, he never reached her.
“Why was Nolan in my hallway?” she asked her security chief.
“Family access.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
The man looked uncomfortable.
“He said Victor wanted fewer household interruptions during financial meetings.”
Serafina went still.
“Victor.”
“Yes.”
The pattern was not simply Nolan bullying a boy.
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Someone had been trying to teach Leo that reaching his mother was no longer automatic.
And Victor’s name had been attached to the rule.
