Chapter 12 - THE LAST DUCА SECRET
The photograph was recent.
Someone had entered Mia's bedroom while our guards were securing the mansion. The thought made my blood run cold.
I ordered the entire property searched, but there was no sign of an intruder.
Then Elena noticed something missing from Mia's bedside table.
A small silver locket.
It had belonged to Adrian, and she had given it to Mia shortly after her first birthday.
Inside was a photograph and a tiny folded note that Elena had never been able to open.
The locket was gone.
I asked whether Adrian had left anything else.
Elena hesitated.
"Before he died, he told me that if anything happened to him, I should never trust the police with the original documents."
"Why?"
"He said the evidence would only be safe once it reached someone outside your father's circle."
We examined the note from the chapel again. Its final page contained a name written in my mother's handwriting.
Judge Evelyn Hart.
Unlike the judge who had helped conceal my father's crimes, Hart was a retired federal magistrate who had investigated organized crime for decades. She had quietly advised my mother before her death.
We contacted her through a secure channel.
She agreed to meet us at a courthouse archive the following morning.
Before we left, Mia tugged at my sleeve.
"Uncle Lorenzo, I know where the shiny box went."
I crouched.
"Where, sweetheart?"
"Miss Vivien put it in the room with the angels."
The chapel.
We searched again and found a second compartment behind the altar. Inside was a duplicate set of records and a letter addressed to Mia.
My mother's handwriting covered the page.
To the little girl I could not protect myself, I am sorry. Your father died trying to give you a future free from our family's cruelty.
May you like
At the bottom, she had written one final warning.
The man who betrayed Adrian is still alive, and he has been calling himself your uncle.
