“Because they needed someone to agree to marry me,” she whispered. “And they knew you wouldn’t say no.”
The silence became unbearable. Outside, the lake’s waters gently lapped against the dock.
They were the price of a secret. And I had just become its unwitting guardian…
I didn’t sleep that night. Clara lay motionless beside me, breathing slowly, while my mind spun between disbelief and fear.
At dawn, I went down to the garden and lit a cigarette. From there I could see the butler preparing breakfast as if nothing had happened.
Everything in that house seemed designed to hide something.
When Clara appeared, she was wearing a long coat and her face was pale.
She asked me to accompany her to the dock.
We walked in silence until the sound of the water enveloped us.
“It wasn’t an accident,” she said suddenly. “That scar isn’t from a common operation. They did that to me… so I couldn’t have children.”
“What are you saying?”
“My father decided that no man who married me for money should inherit his company. So he made me… a kind of guarantee. He thought that if I couldn’t have children, no one would come after me for money. But when he found out I fell in love with you, he changed his strategy. He gave you all this to make sure you wouldn’t abandon me.”
Her words hit me like a cold wave. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. She continued:
“I didn’t marry you to obey him, Marco.” I married you because I thought you could love me unconditionally. But now… I’m not so sure.
The wind lifted her dark hair. I went to her and hugged her, but her body remained rigid.
For the next few weeks, I tried to act normal.
I accepted the contracts her father offered me at his design firm, attended dinners, smiled for photographers.
But something inside me had broken.
One day, while reviewing some blueprints in her father’s office, I found a folder labeled with her name.
Inside were medical reports, diagnoses, and a letter signed by Vannini himself:
“Intervention approved. Reason: asset control.”
I felt nauseous.
That night I confronted my father-in-law. He was in his studio, drinking whiskey by the fire.
“You destroyed your daughter’s life,” I told him. The man looked at me without surprise.
“No, boy. I saved her. Do you think the world would have forgiven her for being my heir? I lifted a burden from her that you’d never understand.”
“Y took away her ability to decide for herself.”
“And what did you do?” he retorted with a bitter smile. “You accepted my money before you knew the truth. Now we both live off my sin.”
I left without answering. Clara didn’t come home that night.
The police found her car by the lake three days later.
Inside, her purse and a letter addressed to me:
“I don’t want you to look for me. You need to remember who I am without the weight of what they did to me… and to you.”
For months I traveled across half of Europe trying to find her.
I went to Milan, Rome, even Marseille, where a friend of hers said she’d seen her in a café across from the port.
Every lead ended in silence. Continue reading…
