Chapter 2 : Emma gave her full statement through an attorney provided independently from the Romano household.
Emma gave her full statement through an attorney provided independently from the Romano household.
Vittorio insisted on that.
He did not want a twenty-five-year-old employee deciding what to say while surrounded by men who worked for him.
Emma’s account began six weeks earlier.
The first incident seemed small.
Bianca told Lucy she could not leave the breakfast table until she finished eggs she disliked.
Lucy cried.
Bianca called it a tantrum.
Nothing unusual.
Then Marcus began attending breakfast.
That was unusual.
Marcus normally arrived later for business meetings.
One morning Lucy spilled milk.
Marcus laughed and said:
“Maybe she needs a bowl on the floor.”
Bianca laughed too.
Emma assumed it was a bad joke.
Two days later, Bianca served Lucy breakfast on a plastic plate while everyone else used china.
The following week she removed Lucy’s chair for ten minutes after the child interrupted an adult conversation.
Then came the first dog bowl.
Empty.
Bianca placed it on the feeding mat and told Lucy that if she kept “acting wild,” that was where breakfast would go next time.
Emma objected.
Bianca told her:
“You work here. You don’t parent here.”
“Did you tell me?” Vittorio asked when he later read the statement.
Emma had.
At least she thought she had.
She sent an email to the household office requesting a private conversation with Vittorio.
The request was marked:
Resolved internally — no escalation required.
Vittorio had never seen it.
“Who resolved it?”
His chief of staff pulled the access record.
Marcus.
Vittorio stared at the screen.
The second attempt came four days later.
Emma left a handwritten note with Vittorio’s personal assistant.
The assistant passed it to Marcus because Vittorio was in a council meeting.
The note disappeared.
Emma stopped trying through normal channels.
“That’s why you recorded?”
“Yes.”
“Why not go to the police?”
Emma swallowed.
“Because the first three things didn’t look criminal.”
She looked embarrassed.
“And because this is your house.”
Vittorio understood what she meant.
A Romano employee did not casually walk into a police station and accuse the boss’s fiancée and a family associate of abusing his child.
The power that protected his household had also frightened a witness into silence.
He looked at Emma.
“You should have been able to tell me.”
She did not reassure him.
May you like
“I tried.”
That answer stayed with him.
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