Chapter 5 - THE MAN MY FATHER FEARED
The room seemed to tilt.
My father stared at Luca with an intensity I'd never seen in him before. His left hand trembled against the armrest, but his finger remained pointed.
Luca didn't move.
“Emma,” my mother whispered, “what does this mean?”
“I don't know.”
But I did know one thing.
My father wasn't confused.
He had recognized Luca and deliberately pointed at him.
I stood between them.
“Mr. Moretti, I think you should leave.”
Luca's face remained calm.
“I understand.”
He stepped back without argument.
That surprised me more than anything else he could have done.
He didn't threaten my father. He didn't demand an explanation. He simply told Daniel to remain with us while he waited outside.
Once the door closed, I knelt beside my father.
“Dad, are you sure?”
He nodded.
“Luca?”
My father closed his eyes, then opened them again.
“Before.”
“Before what?”
He struggled to speak.
“Your... mother.”
My mother went completely still.
“What about me?”
He shook his head, frustrated by his inability to explain.
I fetched a pen and a notepad. His left hand could still write, although the letters came slowly and unevenly.
He wrote one word.
Kitchen.
I stared at it.
“Our old restaurant?”
He nodded.
Then he wrote another word.
Fire.
My mother began shaking.
“No,” she whispered. “That was an accident.”
The fire had happened eighteen years earlier, when I was ten. It had started after closing time in the restaurant's storage room. My father had suffered burns while helping a trapped employee escape. The building had been badly damaged, but the insurance company eventually paid enough for my parents to reopen elsewhere.
We'd always believed a faulty electrical panel caused it.
My father wrote three more words.
Not an accident.
My mouth went dry.
He looked at me, his eyes wet with frustration and fear.
“Luca,” he whispered. “Young.”
My mother covered her lips.
“You knew Luca Moretti before?”
My father nodded.
“Business.”
The word came slowly.
“His... father.”
I had heard stories about Luca's father, Dominic Moretti, a man who had built the family's first restaurant business before his death twelve years earlier. But my parents had never mentioned knowing him.
My father struggled to write again.
This time, he produced a surname.
Moretti.
Then a second.
Bellini.
He drew a line between them.
I felt a chill.
My father had worked as an accountant for a small restaurant supply company before the stroke. He had never been wealthy, never associated with criminals, and never told us anything about Luca's family.
What if he had been keeping a secret for eighteen years?
I went into the corridor and found Luca standing near the window.
“Your father knew mine,” I said.
Luca's expression changed.
“What?”
“My father says he worked with Dominic Moretti. He also says the fire at our old restaurant wasn't an accident.”
For the first time since I'd met him, Luca looked genuinely shaken.
“Dominic died before I took over the company,” he said. “He kept his business dealings private. There are things I never learned about him.”
“Did he know my parents?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why did my father point at you?”
Luca looked down at his hands.
“Because he believes I know something. Or because he believes someone close to me is responsible for what happened.”
I wanted to reject the answer, but it was too reasonable.
“Could your father have been involved in the fire?”
Luca didn't look away.
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt.
He could have defended his family. He could have told me my father was mistaken. Instead, he admitted the possibility.
“I won't ask you to trust me blindly,” he continued. “But I will find out what happened.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because if my family hurt yours, I need to know. And because someone is using my company to steal money under your father's name.”
He paused.
“I have reasons to investigate this that have nothing to do with you.”
It wasn't a romantic declaration. It wasn't a promise that everything would be fine.
It was the first answer I'd heard from him that didn't try to control what I believed.
I returned to my parents.
My father had written another sentence.
Dominic kept the ledger.
“What ledger?” I asked.
He tapped the paper.
“Original... accounts.”
Daniel came into the room with a phone in his hand.
“We found Dr. Harlan,” he said. “He's at a private medical facility outside Chicago. His office has been cleared out, and his bank account was closed this morning.”
“Can we reach him?” Luca asked from the doorway.
Daniel shook his head.
“Not yet. But there's something else. We traced the phone number on your father's note.”
“To whom?”
Daniel hesitated.
“It's registered to a prepaid phone purchased under a false identity. The last call was placed to a number belonging to Adrian Bellini.”
Luca's face hardened.
“Find Adrian.”
“I've already started.”
Then Daniel looked at me.
“There's one more detail. The payment to Bellini Hospitality Consulting was initiated using an authorization key created eighteen years ago.”
“By whom?” I asked.
Daniel turned his laptop around.
The screen showed a scanned authorization form.
The signature at the bottom was unmistakable.
Dominic Moretti.
Luca stared at his dead father's signature.
Then he whispered the words that changed everything.
“My father didn't just know your family.”
May you like
He looked at me.
“He was paying someone to keep them quiet.”
