Chapter 10 - ISABELLA'S CONFESSION
Roman didn't believe Arthur.
Sadi didn't know what to believe anymore.
Isabella agreed to meet federal investigators voluntarily.
She did not bring a lawyer.
Roman hated that.
“Get counsel.”
She looked at him.
“I've spent thirty years letting lawyers turn truth into strategy.”
Fair.
Then she confessed.
She met Marcus the night he died.
She knew about the archive.
She begged him to remove Roman's name.
“Why?” Sadi asked.
Because Roman had unknowingly signed a company restructuring years earlier that moved old contaminated warehouse assets into another entity.
If investigators interpreted records badly, Roman could appear involved in the cover-up.
Marcus refused to alter evidence.
Good.
Isabella panicked.
She called Arthur.
Not to kill Marcus.
To scare him.
Silence.
History repeating itself.
Powerful families asking dangerous men to “scare” inconvenient people.
“What exactly did you say?” Roman asked.
“Make him stop.”
Arthur interpreted it his own way.
Marcus disappeared that night.
Isabella later realized Arthur had killed him.
“Why didn't you report him?”
She cried.
“For the same reason your father didn't report Carlo.”
Family.
Scandal.
Fear.
Roman looked destroyed.
“So you became them.”
“Yes.”
No defense.
That mattered.
Arthur's deal became more credible.
Isabella had initiated the confrontation.
Arthur committed murder.
Both responsible differently.
Then she revealed one final secret.
Marcus had anticipated her panic.
Before meeting, he mailed a copy of the archive to a federal prosecutor.
Why hadn't authorities acted?
Because the package never arrived.
Tracking showed delivery to the federal building.
Signed for by:
A. Stone.
Elijah Stone.
Roman's attorney.
Everyone turned.
Roman went still.
“Elijah?”
The older lawyer had been beside Roman from Chapter 1.
Trusted adviser.
Family counsel.
He had received Marcus's evidence and buried it.
Why?
Because Elijah wasn't only Roman's attorney.
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Twenty-six years earlier, he had been Carlo Moretti's attorney too.
And attorney-client privilege had become the perfect hiding place for a criminal family's history.
