Chapter 3 - THE DEAD MAN'S MESSAGE
Nobody moved.
Not even Vittorio.
Especially not Vittorio.
Lorenzo had spent most of his adult life believing silence revealed more than confession.
The hall proved it.
Bianca's face had become too controlled.
Vittorio looked amused in the exact way guilty men tried to look amused when panic was beginning to climb their spine.
Ranata simply looked terrified.
Mila did not understand any of it.
She rested her cheek against her mother's shoulder while Pino sat beside them like a black stone statue.
Vittorio finally laughed.
“This is insane.”
Lorenzo kept his eyes on him.
“Is it?”
“You're allowing a preschooler to accuse your uncle of theft.”
“No.”
Lorenzo held up the memory card.
“I'm allowing evidence to make me curious.”
He looked at Marco.
“Seal the house.”
Vittorio's smile disappeared.
“What?”
“No one leaves.”
Bianca stepped forward.
“My family is expecting me.”
“They'll wait.”
“You don't confine a Valenti.”
Lorenzo turned toward her.
“This is my house.”
She stared at him.
For the first time since their engagement negotiations began, Bianca seemed to understand something she had previously mistaken.
Lorenzo's restraint was not weakness.
It was choice.
Marco gave orders quietly.
Exterior gates locked.
Phones were collected from household employees who had access to the private wing.
Security footage was preserved.
Then Lorenzo turned to Ranata.
“You and Mila come with me.”
Her face tightened.
“Where?”
“Somewhere nobody can accuse you of anything.”
She hesitated.
Pino stood and moved beside Mila.
The child reached down and touched his ear.
That decided something for Ranata.
She followed.
Lorenzo led them through a private corridor into his father's old office.
It had been unused for years.
Dark wood.
Books nobody touched.
A portrait of Carlo Duca behind the desk.
Lorenzo hated that portrait.
His father had been a hard man.
Not cruel.
But hard in the way men became when they believed the family name mattered more than individual happiness.
Lorenzo had spent half his life becoming strong enough not to become him.
Marco inserted the memory card into an isolated laptop.
“Encrypted.”
“Can you open it?”
“Eventually.”
“How long?”
Marco looked at him.
“Depends how paranoid Matteo was.”
Ranata gave a bitter little laugh.
“Very.”
Lorenzo turned.
“You knew he was hiding something.”
“No.”
“You kept that note for two years.”
“Because he made me promise.”
“Promise what?”
Ranata looked at Mila.
The child was sitting on the carpet with Pino, placing her stuffed rabbit between his paws.
“He told me if anything happened to him, I should leave Chicago.”
“You're from Chicago?”
“Yes.”
“And you came here anyway.”
“I came because I ran out of money.”
Her voice carried no self-pity.
Just exhaustion.
“After Matteo died, there were bills. Then Mila got sick. I sold the apartment. I sold his tools. I sold everything except the note.”
Lorenzo studied her.
“How did you end up in this house?”
“A staffing agency.”
Marco looked up from the computer.
“Which agency?”
“Bell & Rowe.”
Marco frowned.
“What?”
Lorenzo asked.
“That agency doesn't place staff here.”
Ranata went still.
“What do you mean?”
“We stopped using them three years ago.”
“I have paperwork.”
“Who interviewed you?”
Ranata thought.
“A woman named Celeste.”
Marco and Lorenzo exchanged a look.
There was no Celeste in household management.
“Describe her.”
Ranata did.
Forties.
Blond.
Pearl earrings.
A scar near her left eyebrow.
Lorenzo knew the woman.
So did Marco.
Bianca's aunt.
Elena Valenti.
Lorenzo leaned back against the desk.
Ranata stared at him.
“What?”
“You weren't hired by accident.”
Her face lost color.
“Why would anyone put me here?”
“That is what we're going to find out.”
Mila suddenly looked up.
“Mommy, I'm hungry.”
Ranata closed her eyes.
The ordinary sentence broke the tension more effectively than a gunshot could have.
Lorenzo pressed the intercom.
“Send food.”
Ranata immediately said, “You don't need—”
“She is three.”
“I can feed my own daughter.”
“I didn't say you couldn't.”
Their eyes met.
Something passed between them.
Not attraction.
Not yet.
Recognition.
Two people who hated owing anyone anything.
Ten minutes later, a tray arrived.
Soup.
Bread.
Fruit.
Hot chocolate.
Mila climbed into the chair beside Lorenzo's desk.
Pino sat at her feet.
Ranata tried to make the child eat soup first.
Mila negotiated for bread.
Lorenzo watched the argument with an expression usually reserved for hostile acquisitions.
Finally Mila whispered loudly, “He'll give me chocolate.”
Ranata looked at Lorenzo.
“Will he?”
Lorenzo remained perfectly straight-faced.
“I don't interfere in domestic negotiations.”
Marco coughed to hide a laugh.
For a few minutes, the room almost felt normal.
Then the computer beeped.
Marco straightened.
“I'm in.”
The atmosphere changed instantly.
Folders filled the screen.
Dozens.
Dates going back twelve years.
Shipping schedules.
Financial ledgers.
Photographs.
Audio recordings.
Then one folder labeled:
C.D. SUCCESSION
Lorenzo clicked it.
Inside was a video.
His father appeared on screen.
Carlo Duca.
Alive.
Older than Lorenzo remembered him.
The timestamp showed the recording had been made three days before Carlo's death.
Lorenzo felt the room disappear around him.
His father looked directly into the camera.
“If Lorenzo is watching this, then I failed to stop what has already begun.”
Ranata covered Mila's ears instinctively, though the child was busy with bread.
Carlo continued.
“Vittorio has been moving family assets for years.”
Lorenzo stopped breathing.
“He has help inside the Valenti organization.”
Bianca.
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
Carlo leaned closer.
“I believed the marriage alliance might contain the damage.”
Lorenzo's jaw tightened.
Even dead, his father was trying to arrange his life.
Then Carlo said something worse.
“It will not.”
The video glitched.
Recovered.
“Matteo Russo discovered the financial trail. I ordered him to duplicate everything and hide the files somewhere Vittorio would never look.”
The golden clock.
Ranata began crying silently.
Lorenzo watched her.
She had just learned her husband had been involved in something far larger than antique repairs.
Carlo continued.
“If Matteo is dead, assume it was not an accident.”
Ranata's hand flew to her mouth.
Mila noticed.
“Mommy?”
Ranata forced a smile.
“I'm okay.”
She wasn't.
None of them were.
Then Carlo said:
“There is one person Vittorio cannot succeed without.”
The recording froze.
Marco cursed.
“Corrupted sector.”
“Fix it.”
“I'm trying.”
The screen flickered.
Carlo returned.
“Do not trust—”
Static.
Then three seconds of sound.
A woman's voice.
Lorenzo leaned closer.
Marco replayed it.
Again.
A woman's voice in the background saying:
Carlo, they're coming.
Lorenzo knew that voice.
He had heard it through childhood.
Read stories beside it.
Buried it twenty years ago.
His mother's voice.
Lorenzo stepped back.
“That recording is impossible.”
Ranata looked at him.
“Why?”
“My mother died four years before my father.”
Marco stared at the timestamp.
Then at Lorenzo.
The date was unmistakable.
Carlo Duca had recorded the video in 2014.
Lorenzo's mother, Isabella, had supposedly died in 2010.
And yet her voice was on a recording made four years later.
Lorenzo replayed the three seconds.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
His hands slowly curled into fists.
Behind him, the office door suddenly unlocked.
Marco spun around.
He had personally secured it.
The handle turned.
Pino rose, lips pulling back from his teeth.
Lorenzo stepped in front of Ranata and Mila.
The door opened.
Bianca stood there.
But she wasn't alone.
Beside her was an elderly woman wearing a black veil.
The woman lifted trembling hands and removed it.
Lorenzo forgot how to breathe.
Because the face beneath it belonged to someone he had watched being buried sixteen years earlier.
May you like
His mother.
---
