Chapter 2 - DANTE KNEW ABOUT THE AFFAIR
The car did not leave immediately.
Valentina turned back.
“What did he mean?”
Dante looked at Luca.
Then at her.
“I knew he was seeing someone.”
The words landed harder than she expected.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Three weeks.”
Her throat tightened.
“And you said nothing.”
“I was trying to verify it.”
“You had photographs?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
Dante did not answer quickly enough.
Luca laughed.
“He came because he wanted the wedding stopped.”
Valentina looked between them.
“Why?”
Luca descended the last step.
“Because Uncle Dante has always believed I’m not good enough for this family.”
Dante’s expression remained cold.
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.”
Luca turned toward Valentina.
“Do you know why he never married?”
“Luca.”
The warning in Dante’s voice sharpened.
But Luca continued.
“Because he spent twenty years cleaning up everyone else’s messes and pretending that made him noble.”
Valentina did not care.
“Why did you come?”
Dante finally answered.
“Because your father called me yesterday.”
That surprised her.
“My father?”
“He asked whether I knew anything about Luca.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Why would he ask you?”
“Because someone anonymously sent him financial records.”
Financial records.
Not affair evidence.
Something else.
Dante reached inside his coat and removed a folded envelope.
He handed it to her.
Valentina opened it.
Bank transfers.
Large ones.
To a company called ARDEN CONSULTING.
Payments from a Bellini-controlled firm.
Signed by Luca.
She looked at him.
“What is this?”
Luca’s arrogance flickered.
“Business.”
Dante replied:
“No.”
He pointed to the dates.
“The transfers began six months ago.”
The same period as the affair.
Valentina stared.
“What does Arden Consulting do?”
Dante looked at Luca.
“Tell her.”
Luca’s silence answered first.
Dante continued.
“It belongs to the woman in those photographs.”
The air seemed to thin.
Valentina looked at Luca.
“You were paying her?”
“No.”
Dante’s voice turned harder.
“Then explain the invoices.”
Luca stepped forward.
“They were legitimate.”
“For what?”
“Marketing.”
Dante almost smiled.
“Your family construction company paid a one-person consulting firm nearly two million euros for marketing?”
Luca’s face changed.
Valentina felt something inside her move from heartbreak toward clarity.
The affair was not the whole secret.
It was attached to money.
And perhaps power.
She looked at Dante.
“Who is she?”
His answer came quietly.
“Her name is Celeste Arden.”
“I know that.”
“No.”
Dante’s eyes hardened.
“You know the name she gave Luca.”
Valentina’s pulse quickened.
“What’s her real name?”
Dante glanced toward the church, then back at her.
“Celeste is the daughter of the man who tried to destroy the Bellini family seventeen years ago.”
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And according to Dante, she had not come back for Luca.
She had come back for something he possessed.
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