Chapter 6 - The Fire
“Isabella!”
Luca pulled me against him.
Smoke rolled beneath the terrace doors.
Someone had set fire to the west wing.
Marco appeared with a flashlight.
“Kitchen exit. Now.”
“What about my mother?”
“With Sofia.”
Luca kept one arm around me as we moved.
The smoke thickened.
Then a contraction seized my abdomen.
I stopped.
“No.”
Luca went pale.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
“It’s too early.”
Another contraction came.
Stronger.
Marco swore.
The fire had blocked the main staircase.
We crossed a guest room and climbed through a ground-floor window.
Snow hit my bare feet.
Luca lifted me.
“I can walk.”
“Not interested.”
Under any other circumstances, I would have argued.
Instead I wrapped my arms around his neck.
Behind us, flames climbed through the windows.
A car waited beyond the gates.
Twenty minutes later, I was in a hospital.
False labor.
Stress-induced contractions.
Our daughter was fine.
So was I.
Luca sat beside my bed until dawn.
“You can sleep,” I told him.
“No.”
“You’ve been staring at the fetal monitor for three hours.”
“It keeps making noises.”
“That’s what it does.”
“What does that one mean?”
“Luca.”
“What?”
“You’re terrified.”
“Yes.”
The admission was so simple I smiled.
He stared at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You smiled.”
“I’m allowed.”
“I haven’t seen it directed at me in a long time.”
My smile disappeared.
“Don’t make it weird.”
“Too late.”
Detectives arrived that morning.
The fire was arson.
Security footage showed a delivery van approaching the property forty minutes before the fire.
The company was fake.
But the driver wasn’t.
Daniel identified him as Christopher Vale, a former private investigator employed by Vanessa.
Police issued warrants.
By noon, Vanessa Sinclair was officially wanted for questioning.
By two, she called me.
Unknown number.
I answered before Luca could stop me.
“Isabella.”
Her voice was calm.
“Vanessa.”
“You’ve made this unnecessarily dramatic.”
I almost laughed.
“You set a house on fire.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“Interesting defense.”
“I needed Luca’s security distracted.”
“Why?”
Silence.
Then:
“Because there’s something you have that belongs to my family.”
“The trust?”
“You don’t even understand what it is.”
“I understand you destroyed my marriage for money.”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“I saved you from Luca.”
I looked at him.
He was listening.
“You hated that I had him.”
Vanessa laughed.
“You still think this is about jealousy.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“I could have had Luca years before he met you.”
Luca’s expression became disgusted.
Vanessa continued.
“I needed you isolated. Your marriage made you difficult to control.”
“Control for what?”
“You’ll understand soon.”
The line disconnected.
Police traced nothing.
But Luca focused on one phrase.
“Something you have.”
I remembered my father’s recording.
Then my mother remembered the necklace.
My grandmother had given it to me when I turned eighteen.
A cheap-looking oval locket I had worn for years.
It was currently inside a jewelry box at my apartment.
Daniel retrieved it under police escort.
It wasn’t a locket.
Inside the metal casing was a tiny storage device.
Adrian connected it to an isolated computer.
Encrypted files appeared.
Financial records.
Trust documents.
And a video.
An elderly man appeared on-screen.
My biological great-grandfather.
Jonathan Sinclair.
“If you are watching this,” he began, “then someone has finally discovered what I did.”
The video explained everything.
Jonathan had discovered that his brother had been laundering money through the family companies.
He gathered evidence and hid copies with my grandmother.
The trust was not merely money.
It contained controlling shares in Sinclair Holdings.
Whoever controlled the trust could expose decades of fraud.
Vanessa’s entire family empire could collapse.
“She wasn’t protecting an inheritance,” Luca said.
“She was protecting herself,” I whispered.
Daniel opened the final file.
A ledger.
Names.
Payments.
Politicians.
Executives.
Judges.
Vanessa’s family had spent decades buying protection.
Then we found one payment made seven months earlier.
Recipient:
Elias Grant.
Luca went rigid.
I knew the name.
Elias Grant had been Luca’s divorce attorney.
The man who had assured Luca the papers were valid.
The man who had personally handled our settlement.
May you like
And suddenly the conspiracy was no longer outside Luca’s world.
It had been sitting at his table.
