Chapter 11 - THE MAN WHO HELPED RAISE MY SONS
I wanted to believe Raymond had been coerced.
Elena did too.
We were both wrong.
Raymond admitted everything.
Not immediately.
But once confronted with the recording, he stopped pretending.
Six years earlier, Elena arrived in Maine pregnant, terrified, with little money.
Her aunt Margaret took her in.
Raymond saw opportunity.
Victor approached him months later.
Five thousand dollars for updates.
Then ten.
Then more.
School addresses.
Medical records.
Travel plans.
Nothing violent, Raymond insisted.
Just information.
Elena stared at him.
“You sold photographs of my children?”
“I needed money.”
“We were living in your basement while I paid groceries.”
“I know.”
“You held Enzo when he had pneumonia.”
Raymond looked away.
That betrayal cut deeper than Moretti politics ever could.
Then he said:
“I stopped.”
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because Victor asked me to arrange an accident.”
Silence.
My hands went cold.
Raymond refused.
That's when Victor began using others.
Raymond claimed the loosened lug nuts were Victor's first independent attempt.
He told Vale anonymously.
So Raymond had betrayed them for years, then quietly prevented one attack.
Human beings are exhausting.
“Why didn't you confess?” Elena asked.
“Margaret would leave me.”
Elena laughed through tears.
“That's what you're worried about?”
Margaret did leave him.
Immediately.
The boys were told only that Uncle Ray had made serious adult mistakes and would not be around for a while.
No need to put financial betrayal on six-year-old shoulders.
Then Raymond gave us a location.
Victor kept original trust documents in a private vault beneath an old Moretti-owned warehouse in South Boston.
Not illegal weapons.
Not bodies.
Paper.
The most dangerous thing in this story.
Federal investigators obtained a warrant based on William's evidence.
The vault contained everything.
Insurance policies.
Bribery records.
False DNA preparations.
Payments to Raymond.
A draft plan to remove my sons' succession rights.
And one document no one expected.
A signed adoption consent.
My name forged.
Elena's name forged.
Prepared six years ago.
Prospective adoptive parents:
William and Helena Barrett.
Sloane's parents.
Elena sat down.
“They were going to take my babies?”
Sloane looked like she might be sick.
William insisted he never signed it.
True.
Only Victor's preparation notes existed.
Victor had apparently considered manufacturing an adoption transfer if Elena became vulnerable after delivery.
He abandoned the plan when Anthony began paying her medical bills secretly.
My father had done more than keep the babies alive.
His intervention may have kept them with Elena.
Then Patricia found an attached handwritten note.
A.V. objects. If he interferes again, finish what failed at the estate.
A.V.
Anthony Victor? No.
My father's full name:
Anthony Vincent Moretti.
Victor had explicitly documented a second plan to kill my father.
We finally had enough.
Arrest warrants followed.
Victor disappeared before officers reached him.
His phone pinged once.
At the private conservatory where, eleven days earlier, I was supposed to propose to Sloane.
May you like
And according to security cameras, he wasn't alone.
He had my mother.
