Chapter 8 - MY MOTHER’S LAST NIGHT
My mother died in a car accident when I was nineteen.
That was the fact around which I had built adulthood.
Rain.
A highway.
A truck crossing lanes.
A policeman at our door at 2:13 in the morning.
There had never been a mystery.
Until Thomas Vale appeared in a photograph taken years before her death.
I zoomed in.
My mother looked younger than I remembered.
Thomas had one hand on her shoulder.
Between them stood Alessandro Moretti.
Adrien’s father.
“What was she doing with them?”
Adrien shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe your father arranged our meeting and you never asked why?”
“I asked. He said your mother had been a minority shareholder who refused a buyout.”
“And you accepted that?”
“At the time.”
I looked away.
That was Adrien’s greatest flaw.
He interrogated everyone except the people he loved.
His father.
Luca.
Me.
Perhaps that was why our marriage had fallen apart.
Not because he lacked feeling.
Because feeling frightened him into secrecy.
Vanessa searched archived legal correspondence.
A letter appeared from my mother to Thomas Vale dated two weeks before her death.
THOMAS,
I HAVE THE ORIGINAL LEDGER. IF ALESSANDRO WILL NOT CORRECT THE BELLINI TRANSFERS, I WILL TAKE EVERYTHING TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL.
My hands trembled.
Another email.
Thomas to Alessandro:
MARGARET WILL NOT BACK DOWN. WE NEED A PERMANENT SOLUTION.
Adrien stood abruptly.
“No.”
Nobody spoke.
He reread the sentence.
Then again.
“You think they killed her?” I whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“Your father—”
“I said I don’t know.”
His voice cracked.
Not anger.
Horror.
Adrien walked to the window.
For the first time since I had known him, he looked like a son discovering his father had been a stranger.
Vanessa found the police report.
My mother’s brake line had ruptured.
Investigators concluded mechanical failure.
But the vehicle had been serviced the previous morning.
The mechanic?
A company later purchased by Vale Holdings.
Thomas’s company.
I felt sick.
Adrien turned.
“I’m taking this to federal prosecutors.”
“You trust them?”
“I trust evidence.”
“Do you?”
He absorbed the accusation.
Then nodded.
“You’re right.”
No defense.
No command.
Just two words.
It made me angrier because it sounded like the man I had once loved.
His phone rang.
Maria.
Adrien answered.
Her voice was frantic.
“Mr. Moretti, someone broke into the penthouse.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing from the safe.”
“What then?”
A pause.
“Mrs. Moretti’s things.”
I went cold.
“What things?”
“Her mother’s photograph. Old letters. The box from the hall closet.”
I knew that box.
It contained everything I had inherited from my mother.
Adrien asked, “Did security see who entered?”
“Yes.”
He put Maria on video.
She sent the image.
The camera showed a man wearing a baseball cap entering with a valid Moretti access badge.
He looked up for one frame.
Adrien froze.
“So Luca lied.”
But I recognized the man too.
It wasn’t Luca.
It was someone I hadn’t seen since my mother’s funeral.
My maternal uncle.
May you like
Daniel Bennett.
The man my family told me had died four years ago.
