Chapter 8 - MRS. DORA'S SECRET
Raphael returned home before dawn.
Mrs. Dora was waiting in the library.
She did not deny anything.
“You knew about the notebook?”
“Yes.”
“Why was your name in it?”
“Because your father trusted me.”
Raphael laughed without humor.
“You were his housekeeper.”
“I was much more than that.”
Clara sat nearby with Noel asleep against her.
Daniel remained by the door.
Dora looked at Raphael.
“Your father knew Victor Salvi was planning to kill him.”
“Then why go out that night?”
“To meet Anthony.”
“Why?”
“To negotiate peace.”
Raphael’s father had wanted to end the bloodshed around the harbor.
Victor refused.
Dora had secretly carried messages between both sides.
Raphael’s father wrote everything in the black notebook because he knew someone close to him was betraying him.
“Who?”
Dora’s eyes filled.
“I never learned.”
“But Bianca may know now.”
“Yes.”
Raphael paced.
“If Bianca gives that notebook to Victor—”
“He will know which accounts, judges, businesses and politicians your father once controlled.”
“Most of those relationships are dead.”
“Some aren’t.”
Then Dora looked toward Clara.
“And one page was not about business.”
Clara raised her eyes.
“What page?”
“Your father wrote about Victor’s daughter.”
Clara.
Raphael stared at Dora.
“Why would my father care about her?”
“Because he knew Victor would eventually use her.”
Dora opened an old drawer.
Inside was a letter.
Raphael recognized his father’s handwriting.
Dora handed it to Clara.
The letter was dated two months before his death.
If Victor’s daughter is ever found, she must be protected. The child is innocent of her father’s sins.
Clara read it twice.
Her eyes filled.
Raphael looked away.
His father had known she existed.
Then Dora revealed another secret.
“Your father created a trust for her.”
Clara blinked.
“What?”
“It was meant to give her enough money to disappear if Victor ever found her.”
Raphael asked the obvious question.
“Where is it?”
Dora’s face darkened.
“Gone.”
“Who took it?”
“I thought Anthony.”
Anthony, sitting under guard in the next room, denied it.
Daniel began searching old records.
Twenty minutes later he found the transfer.
The trust had been emptied seven years ago.
Every dollar had moved into an account controlled by Bianca Morelli.
Clara stared toward the hallway.
“Bianca knew who I was before she ever met Raphael.”
Raphael understood.
The maid had never accidentally wandered into his household.
May you like
Someone had made sure Clara got hired there.
And the employment recommendation had come from Bianca herself.
