Chapter 4 - Her Father’s Last Secret
The key opened a safe-deposit box in Madison.
Beatatrice wanted to go herself.
Adrian refused.
“No.”
“I didn't ask permission.”
“And I didn't offer an opinion.”
She stared at him.
He stared back.
Daniel cleared his throat.
“I’m going to make coffee.”
Coward.
Beatatrice waited until Daniel disappeared.
“Gabriel spent years deciding where I could go, who drove me, which security detail followed me. I didn't leave him so another man could make those decisions.”
Something changed in Adrian's expression.
“Fair.”
That one word surprised her.
“We go together,” he said. “You make the decisions. I make sure you survive them.”
That she could accept.
The box contained three things.
A flash drive.
A handwritten letter.
And legal documents transferring controlling shares in Bellini Maritime Holdings to Beatatrice.
She stared at the percentage.
Fifty-one percent.
“That company doesn't exist anymore.”
Daniel shook his head.
“It does.”
“Who owns the other forty-nine?”
He hesitated.
“Rossy Consolidated.”
Beatatrice looked up.
“Gabriel.”
Adrian nodded.
Suddenly her marriage looked different.
Her father had quietly given her control of a company intertwined with Gabriel’s empire.
Except she had never activated the trust.
She opened the letter.
My Bea,
If you are reading this, someone has forced you to learn that wealth and love become dangerous when one person controls both.
Her eyes blurred.
She continued.
Her father explained that Bellini Maritime held contracts, warehouses, waterfront property, and voting rights worth hundreds of millions.
More importantly, its internal archives documented decades of transactions involving several criminal families.
The flash drive contained the index.
But the encrypted files themselves were stored elsewhere.
“Where?” Beatatrice asked.
Daniel pointed toward the final sentence.
Home is not always where you live. Sometimes it is where your mother taught you to become yourself.
Beatatrice knew instantly.
“Lake Geneva.”
Her mother’s cottage.
Adrian shook his head.
“If we figured that out—”
“Someone else can.”
Exactly.
They left within minutes.
They arrived too late.
Smoke was rising through the trees.
Beatatrice screamed.
The cottage was burning.
Adrian grabbed her before she could run toward it.
“My mother's things are inside!”
“Bea!”
“My photographs!”
A window exploded.
She stopped fighting.
Fire consumed the porch where her mother had taught her to braid flowers.
Then Beatatrice saw movement.
A man emerged from the woods carrying a metal case.
Adrian saw him too.
He ran.
The stranger sprinted toward an SUV.
Adrian caught him before he reached it.
They crashed into the snow.
Beatatrice stayed behind the car as ordered—not because Adrian commanded her, but because her child mattered more than proving courage.
Seconds later, Adrian returned with the metal case.
The attacker escaped.
The cottage didn't survive.
But the case did.
Inside were paper ledgers.
Photographs.
And a recording device.
Daniel inserted the first tape.
Thomas Bellini's voice filled the car.
“If this recording is being played, something has happened to me.”
Beatatrice covered her mouth.
Her father continued.
He named businessmen.
Judges.
Police officers.
Criminal organizations.
Then one name made Adrian stiffen.
Sebastian Rossy.
Gabriel's father.
Thomas described a network that Sebastian had built decades earlier.
Then came the revelation.
Thomas had discovered Sebastian intended to murder Adrian Vale's father and seize his organization.
Thomas warned Adrian.
That was how he had saved Adrian's life.
But Thomas had also written something else.
Sebastian was not working alone.
He had a partner.
A man Thomas referred to only as The Bishop.
Daniel rewound the tape.
“Why hide his name?”
Adrian looked at the ledger.
“Maybe he didn't.”
They examined the coded transactions.
One account appeared repeatedly.
BISHOP HOLDINGS.
Beatatrice searched the incorporation paperwork.
Her breath stopped.
The registered agent was a law firm.
Daniel recognized it.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“That firm represents someone you know.”
Beatatrice looked at him.
“Who?”
Daniel answered.
“Your uncle, Victor Bellini.”
Her father's younger brother.
The man who had walked Beatatrice down the aisle.
The man who called every Sunday.
The man who had comforted her after her father's death.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
Adrian reached for it.
Beatatrice stopped him.
“My choice.”
He nodded.
She answered.
“Hello?”
“Beatrice.”
Victor.
She forced herself to breathe normally.
“Uncle Victor.”
“Thank God. Gabriel called everyone. He says you're missing.”
Beatatrice looked at the burning remains of her mother's cottage.
“I'm safe.”
“Where are you?”
Adrian shook his head.
Beatatrice said, “I can't tell you.”
Victor sounded heartbroken.
“Sweetheart, Gabriel is losing his mind.”
“Good.”
A pause.
Then Victor laughed softly.
Not warmly.
Beatatrice's blood chilled.
“You always were your father's daughter.”
The line went dead.
Adrian looked at her.
“He knows.”
Beatatrice lowered the phone.
“No.”
May you like
She looked toward the flames.
“He wanted me to know that he knows.”
