Chapter 7 - MY HUSBAND’S NAME WAS IN MY FATHER’S BOOK
I wanted to accuse Dante immediately.
Instead, I did what my father had taught me when I was fifteen and furious about a school rumor.
Read before you decide.
Natalia sent photographs of the pages.
Dates.
Initials.
Accounts.
Property numbers.
Then:
D.M. — UNAWARE. KEEP HIM THAT WAY UNTIL VITTORIO IS GONE.
I read it twice.
Dante was not listed as guilty.
He was listed as someone being protected from the truth.
My anger shifted.
Not away from him.
Toward the architecture of secrets that had shaped both our lives.
“Your father knew me,” Dante whispered.
“He knew about you.”
“He thought I was innocent.”
“At that time.”
Dante accepted the correction.
My father’s notebook described North Meridian in detail.
It also contained another name.
A.V.
Angelo Vale.
Natalia’s father.
Beside it, my father had written:
NOT TRAITOR. FEARFUL. HAS ORIGINAL LORENZO RECORDING.
Elias leaned closer.
“Recording?”
The night Lorenzo died, he had apparently recorded a conversation with Vittorio.
If it survived, it could prove Vittorio ordered Rafael’s murder and help explain decades of stolen assets.
“Where is it?” Dante asked.
Another message from Natalia answered.
WITH ME.
Then:
Rafael lied about one thing.
A video file arrived.
This one showed Natalia standing alone.
Her gun was gone.
Her face looked exhausted.
“Dante,” she said, “I need you to understand something before you decide what I am.”
He stared at the screen.
“I approached you deliberately.”
My chest tightened.
No surprise.
“I wanted access to Lorenzo’s records. I wanted your biometric credentials. I wanted Isabella angry enough to separate from you so the independent-control clause would activate.”
There it was.
The gala had been engineered.
But then she said:
“I did not plan to sleep with you.”
Dante’s face hardened.
“I thought I could make you trust me without that.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Then you made it easy.”
He closed his eyes.
She continued.
“I hated Isabella for years because my father told me the Romano family received everything while ours lost everything. I believed she was living off money purchased with my father’s silence.”
I felt nothing but exhaustion.
Natalia looked into the camera.
“I was wrong.”
She had discovered my father had been helping Angelo.
The two men were trying to dismantle Vittorio’s control together.
Our fathers had not been enemies.
They had been allies.
Then Natalia revealed the final piece.
Rafael had not been kidnapped by her.
He had contacted her first.
He wanted the old crimes exposed.
He knew someone else had reactivated North Meridian.
Someone neither Dante nor Natalia controlled.
“Who?” Dante asked the dead screen.
The next message contained one name.
GIULIA MORETTI.
Dante’s mother.
I stared at him.
His mother had lived in Florence for twelve years.
Quiet.
Elegant.
Apparently uninvolved.
Dante’s face went completely still.
“My mother doesn’t know anything about the business.”
Elias shook his head.
“According to these records, she knows enough to move ninety-nine million dollars.”
Then my phone rang.
Giulia.
I answered.
She did not say hello.
“Isabella, whatever Dante tells you, do not let him open North Meridian.”
“Why?”
Her voice broke.
“Because the money isn’t the dangerous thing inside it.”
“What is?”
May you like
A pause.
“Proof that Dante is not Lorenzo Moretti’s son.”
