Chapter 6 - CELESTE HAD CHOSEN ME BEFORE SHE CHOSE LUCA
Celeste wanted Valentina’s inheritance.
That was the obvious answer.
It was also wrong.
Luca told them that Celeste first approached him at a charity dinner eight months earlier.
Before flirtation.
Before secrecy.
Before anything romantic.
She asked about Valentina.
Where she lived.
Whether she worked.
Whether she had independent control over Moretti assets.
Whether she planned to remain in Italy after marriage.
“Why didn’t that bother you?” Valentina asked.
Luca looked away.
“I thought she was curious.”
“You thought a stranger asking about your fiancée’s inheritance was curious?”
“I thought she was interested in the families.”
Dante muttered something under his breath.
Valentina almost agreed.
Luca continued.
Celeste became more attentive to him only after learning Valentina had resisted joining the Moretti family business.
“I told her you hated financial meetings.”
“I don’t hate them.”
“You always left.”
“Because every man in the room talked over me.”
That silenced him.
Celeste apparently believed Valentina would sign whatever was placed in front of her.
That assessment had almost been correct.
Almost.
But why Valentina specifically?
Dante ordered a deeper review of Vescari records.
He did not ask Valentina to leave.
He invited her to sit beside the analysts.
For six hours she watched money trails emerge.
Then one name appeared.
ELENA VESCARI.
Celeste’s mother.
Valentina frowned.
“Who is she?”
Dante looked up sharply.
Alberto went pale.
Interesting.
Valentina turned toward her father.
“You know her.”
He sat down.
“Elena was your mother’s business partner.”
“What?”
Before Valentina’s mother married Alberto, she had co-owned a boutique agricultural investment firm with Elena Vescari.
They purchased small Tuscan estates, rehabilitated them, then sold or leased them.
One property became the Moretti vineyard.
Valentina stared.
“Mom bought the vineyard with Celeste’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Alberto hesitated.
“Elena disappeared from the partnership.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She was bought out.”
“Fairly?”
Silence.
Valentina laughed without humor.
“Of course.”
Dante looked at Alberto.
“How much?”
“Too little.”
There it was.
Another family fortune built on an elegant version of someone else losing.
Valentina stood.
“Did Mom know?”
Alberto’s eyes lowered.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
That hurt.
Her father had spent decades teaching her about family honor while benefiting from a settlement he knew was unfair.
Dante asked for the original sale documents.
They arrived the next morning.
The buyout was legal.
Signed.
Witnessed.
But attached to it was a private letter from Elena Vescari.
One sentence had been underlined:
IF MY DAUGHTER EVER LEARNS WHAT YOU DID, SHE WILL COME BACK FOR WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN OURS.
The letter was dated twenty-nine years earlier.
Valentina was twenty-eight.
May you like
And suddenly Celeste’s obsession with her did not look financial alone.
It looked inherited.
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