Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF A DAUGHTER
Eleanor survived surgery, but the bullet had passed dangerously close to an artery. At the hospital, Luca sat beside her bed until sunrise, watching the steady rise and fall of her breathing.
For twenty years, he had believed his mother was dead. He had built his life around that absence, turning grief into discipline and discipline into power. Now she was alive, and the discovery hurt almost as much as the loss.
When she finally opened her eyes, Luca leaned forward.
“Who gave Franklin the money?”
Eleanor swallowed.
“I don't know the full name. I only saw the account number in the ledger. It belonged to a trust established before you were born.”
“Whose trust?”
“Your grandfather's.”
Luca stared at her.
His grandfather had died when Luca was a child, leaving Antonio the family business. The trust had supposedly been dissolved after the funeral. If it still existed, someone had been moving money through it for decades.
“Why didn't you take the ledger to the police?”
“I tried. Richard had people watching me. He told me the original papers would be destroyed if I went public. I hid the copy, hoping I could get it to Antonio.”
“Where is it?”
Eleanor's fingers tightened around his.
“Somewhere only Thomas knows.”
Across the hall, Vanessa sat under guard. She had not been arrested yet, but Marco had collected enough evidence to make her a suspect in the threats against Sophie. When Thomas arrived, she stood so abruptly that the chair scraped the floor.
“Dad.”
Thomas stopped in the doorway.
For a long moment, neither moved.
“I thought you were dead,” he said.
“I was told you didn't want me.”
“I searched for you.”
“You stopped.”
“I never stopped.” His voice shook. “I stopped finding you.”
Vanessa began to cry, but Thomas didn't rush to embrace her. Too much had happened for one apology to erase twenty years.
“You let me believe I had no family,” she whispered.
“Someone made us enemies.”
“And I made Sophie pay for it.”
Thomas glanced toward the young maid, who stood near the nurses' station holding a cup of coffee for Antonio.
“Yes,” he said. “You did.”
Vanessa looked down.
“I don't expect you to forgive me.”
“Good,” Thomas replied. “Because forgiveness isn't something you get to demand. It's something you earn.”
She nodded, accepting the blow.
Then she revealed something that changed the investigation.
Richard had arranged her engagement to Luca not merely to gain influence over the company. He had given her a list of people to watch, including the estate's accountant, the family doctor, and Sophie Bennett.
“Why Sophie?” Luca asked when he heard.
Vanessa's face tightened. “Because Richard believed she had found something in the old guardhouse.”
Sophie went still.
Three weeks earlier, she had discovered a loose brick behind the guardhouse while sheltering Thomas from the rain. Inside the cavity was a rusted tin box. She had found only an old key and a folded piece of paper bearing the number 417.
She had assumed it was meaningless.
Now Luca called Marco and asked him to search the guardhouse.
The tin box was still there, but the cavity had been disturbed. Someone had tried to remove it after Sophie first discovered it. Inside, beneath the dust, lay a small brass key stamped with the initials F.H.
“Franklin Hayes,” Marco said.
The key opened a safe-deposit box at a private bank downtown. Luca went with Daniel Price and a lawyer who had no ties to the Moretti organization.
Inside the box were a ledger, a reel of old audio tape, and a sealed envelope addressed to Antonio.
The ledger recorded payments to shell companies, judges, police officers, and two medical facilities. Several entries were marked with the same number: 417.
The audio tape contained Franklin Hayes's voice.
“If anything happens to me, the accident was ordered by Richard. But the money came from someone else. Antonio must know that the person who funded the operation was present the night Eleanor disappeared.”
A second voice answered.
“Then make sure Antonio never hears it.”
Luca recognized the speaker.
It was his father.
He replayed the recording twice, hoping the sound would change.
It didn't.
Antonio's voice had arranged the silence.
When Luca confronted him at the hospital, Antonio listened without interrupting. Then he closed his eyes.
“I knew Richard was stealing,” he said. “I knew Franklin was involved. After the crash, I was told Eleanor had died because she had discovered the accounts. I was terrified they'd come for you next.”
“So you let Thomas take the blame.”
“I was weak.”
“You let my mother live as a prisoner.”
“I believed she was dead.”
“And you never investigated?”
Antonio's face crumpled.
“I was afraid that if I looked too closely, I'd find out I had helped destroy my own family.”
Luca stepped away, unable to look at him.
Then Daniel Price entered with a new report.
The bank's security footage showed someone accessing the safe-deposit box two days before Luca arrived.
The visitor had used a false identity, but the camera had captured his face.
Marco enlarged the image.
Luca stared at the screen.
The man was not Richard.
He was the Moretti family's trusted lawyer, the person who had been handling Antonio's medical affairs for twenty years.
And in his hand was a second key.
May you like
One that opened a room beneath the estate.
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