Chapter 7 - THE NIGHT SOFIA BECAME A KILLER
Gabriel refused the claim immediately.
“My wife never killed anyone.”
Anna answered:
“She didn't pull the trigger.”
That was different.
Years earlier, Antonio Bellini discovered Catherine—my mother—wanted out of the family.
She had a child.
Me.
She wanted no criminal inheritance.
Antonio refused at first.
Then Sofia intervened.
Why would Sofia care?
Because Sofia and Catherine had become friends as teenagers.
They met at a Catholic school before their families knew who the other belonged to.
A Rossi future wife.
A Bellini daughter.
A friendship nobody approved.
When Antonio began using Catherine to move legitimate money, Sofia helped her create an escape.
Antonio discovered it.
Threatened to take me and raise me inside the Bellini family.
Catherine panicked.
Sofia told Gabriel's father, Lorenzo, what was happening.
Lorenzo arranged pressure on Antonio.
A meeting.
A warning.
Instead, Antonio was killed leaving the meeting.
For twelve years, everyone blamed Lorenzo.
But Anna had found documents suggesting Marco altered the security route that night.
Marco may have engineered Antonio's death and allowed both families to blame each other.
“Why?” Gabriel asked.
“Money,” I said.
Everything kept returning to money.
Antonio's legitimate holdings passed partially into my trust.
Marco later stole them.
If Antonio lived, Marco never controlled those assets.
Then Mara confirmed something startling.
At age twenty, Marco had secretly worked for a Bellini financial adviser.
He had access to both sides.
Not loyal to family.
Loyal to opportunity.
Anna agreed to surrender.
Federal investigators collected her.
She faced charges for falsified identity and endangering Leo through deception, but her cooperation mattered.
Then she gave us Sofia's hidden diary.
She had taken it from the Rossi estate after Sofia died because Marco was searching for it.
The diary changed everything.
Sofia suspected Marco was behind Antonio's death.
She also discovered he was stealing from Bellini survivor trusts.
Including mine.
That's why she met my mother.
That's why she knew my name.
They were building evidence.
Then Sofia's last entries became frantic.
Marco knows about Elena.
Marco knows about Leo.
He says bloodlines should pay for bloodlines.
A week later, Sofia died in a car fire.
Gabriel stopped reading.
His face had gone completely white.
The official investigation called the fire an accident caused by a fuel-line rupture.
Mara reopened the file.
The damaged vehicle had been destroyed after examination.
But photographs remained.
One showed a clean cut in the fuel line.
Not rupture.
Cut.
Gabriel looked at me.
For three years, he'd grieved an accident.
Now he had to consider his brother murdered his wife.
Then we reached Sofia's final diary page.
If Marco kills me, Gabriel must never know the second child survived.
Gabriel stared.
“Second child?”
May you like
Leo was Sofia's only child.
Or so he believed.
