Chapter 4 - My wife Seraphina
Seraphina had been thirty-six when she died.
She was not born into the Bellafonte world.
She was a gemologist.
Then a compliance executive.
Then my wife.
Everyone assumed she married me for money.
Seraphina found that hilarious.
On our third date, she told me:
“You are much less mysterious than people think.”
I asked:
“What am I?”
“An overmanaged man surrounded by underqualified cousins.”
I married her eighteen months later.
Tilly was born five years after that.
Seraphina loved diamonds professionally.
Hated them socially.
She said:
“The stone is never the interesting part. The story people attach to it is.”
That sentence eventually killed her.
Three years before the gala, Seraphina began reviewing donation records for the Bellafonte-Dane Children’s Relief Foundation.
The charity auctioned:
Jewelry.
Art.
Luxury experiences.
High-value donated collectibles.
Clarissa’s late husband, Julian Dane, handled much of the foundation’s donor network.
Seraphina found irregularities.
Then she died.
May you like
I never knew whether the two facts were connected.
Clarissa apparently did.
