Chapter 11 - SOMEONE STOLE TWO HUNDRED MILLION IN MY NAME
The account was opened three months before my wedding.
I had never seen it.
Never signed for it.
Never received a statement.
Yet legally, on paper, Lena Reed Moretti controlled two hundred and twelve million dollars in offshore holdings.
The money vanished at 5:03 a.m. the morning I left the penthouse.
Forty-six minutes after I drove away.
Federal investigators immediately assumed I knew something.
Rachel shut that down quickly.
Then one agent asked Dante:
“Who knew she was leaving?”
Dante looked at me.
“Sofia.”
My stomach tightened.
She had watched me leave his office.
But Sofia’s devices showed no transfers.
Vittorio was already under surveillance by then.
Matteo was outside Illinois.
Someone else had access.
Dante’s security chief, Marco Bellini, entered the investigation.
Marco had worked beside Dante for eleven years.
He stood at our wedding.
He carried me to the hospital once when I fainted after food poisoning.
I trusted him.
That became a familiar warning sign.
Financial logs showed Marco used my identity credentials to access the account.
Dante looked devastated.
“Why?”
Marco disappeared before agents could arrest him.
Then I remembered something.
The night I left the penthouse, Marco had been downstairs.
He offered to drive me.
I refused.
He watched me place my suitcase in the car.
He knew exactly when I was gone.
Twenty-four hours later, police found his abandoned vehicle near O’Hare.
No Marco.
But inside the trunk was a burner phone.
One outgoing number.
My mother’s.
I stared at the record.
“That’s impossible.”
My mother, Elaine Reed, lived in Indiana.
She ran the church library.
She baked terrible banana bread.
She still mailed birthday cards because she believed texts were lazy.
I called her.
Disconnected.
My father, sitting beside me, went pale.
“What?”
He said nothing.
“Dad.”
His eyes filled.
“Your mother knew about the money.”
The room fell silent.
“What?”
Thomas explained that after leaving the Moretti organization decades earlier, he had never fully trusted witness protection.
He kept copies.
Records.
Account numbers.
Elaine knew everything.
“When Vittorio found us five years ago, your mother made a deal.”
I stood.
“What deal?”
“She agreed to watch the hidden account.”
“For whom?”
“For you.”
My anger rose.
“Everyone seems obsessed with protecting me without telling me anything.”
“I know.”
“No, Dad. You don’t.”
Then Rachel entered holding a newly recovered bank authorization.
Elaine Reed had not stolen the two hundred million.
She had moved it into a domestic trust thirty minutes after I fled Chicago.
The beneficiary names were listed.
Lena Moretti.
And any biological children born to Lena Moretti.
My hand instinctively went to my stomach.
My mother somehow knew I might need that money before I knew I was pregnant.
But the signature authorizing the transfer was not Elaine’s.
It belonged to Marco.
And underneath his signature was a handwritten note:
Dante cannot protect her from Vittorio anymore. I promised Lucia I would.
Marco Bellini had not betrayed Dante.
He had been working for Lucia Moretti all along.
Then my father whispered:
“Marco isn’t his real name.”
I looked at him.
“Who is he?”
Thomas’s answer stunned Dante most of all.
May you like
“Marco Bellini is Lucia Moretti’s youngest son.”
Dante’s uncle had spent eleven years standing three feet behind him.
