Chapter 2 - SOMEONE WANTED THE TRUTH BACKThe blackout lasted eleven seconds.
I counted every one of them.
People screamed.
Glass broke.
Somebody slammed into my shoulder.
A hand grabbed the letter.
I tightened my fist around it and drove my elbow backward.
A man grunted.
“Sebastian!” Sofia shouted somewhere near the kitchen.
“Elisa!”
“She’s with me!”
The emergency lights flickered on.
Dim amber strips illuminated the ballroom.
Guests stood frozen between tables.
Lucinda had vanished.
Preston was still there.
But his right hand was bleeding.
I looked down.
A jagged porcelain fragment lay beside his shoe.
He had cut himself trying to reach me.
“You’re insane,” I said.
Preston stared at the letter in my fist.
“You don’t know what it can do.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
Security chief Marcus Hale crossed the ballroom.
Unlike most of the men employed by my relatives, Marcus worked for me.
Former Army investigator.
Forty-eight years old.
Almost impossible to surprise.
Right now, he looked surprised.
“Power didn’t fail,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Someone shut the ballroom circuit manually.”
“Find out who.”
“Already doing it.”
I folded the letter and put it inside my jacket.
Preston saw.
His expression darkened.
“You need to give me that.”
“No.”
“Sebastian.”
“My father wrote my name on it.”
“Your father was sick.”
“My father built half of what this family owns.”
“And destroyed the other half.”
There it was.
For seventeen years, the Moretti family had treated Anthony Moretti’s death like sacred history.
He had supposedly died of a heart attack at forty-six.
A tragic loss.
A devoted husband who never recovered from losing his wife.
A brilliant businessman.
A beloved brother.
Now Preston was calling him sick.
“You have thirty seconds,” I said.
“For what?”
“To tell me why my father wrote that you knew what happened the night my mother died.”
Preston looked around.
“Not here.”
“You seemed comfortable attacking me here.”
His eyes hardened.
“Because there are things more dangerous than embarrassment.”
The lights returned fully.
At the far end of the room, the wedding planner was crying.
The string quartet stood beside abandoned instruments.
My cousin Carlo, the groom, approached.
“Sebastian, what the hell is going on?”
“I’m sorry about your wedding.”
“You think I care about the wedding right now? Aunt Lucinda just ran out through the service hallway.”
Marcus looked at me.
“I’ll find her.”
“No.”
I stopped him.
“Find Elisa first.”
My daughter mattered more.
Always.
Two minutes later, I found her in the estate kitchen with Sofia.
She sat on a counter while a nurse from the guest list cleaned the tiny scratch on her palm.
When Elisa saw me, she raised both arms.
I held her against my chest.
“I broke Grandma’s pot.”
“That wasn’t Grandma’s.”
“Aunt Lucinda mad.”
“Aunt Lucinda has problems.”
Sofia gave me a look.
“She’s three.”
“She already figured that part out.”
Elisa buried her face against my neck.
I kissed her hair.
For years, I had believed I understood fear.
I had grown up in a family where men whispered instead of threatened, because whispering meant the decision had already been made.
But becoming a father changed the definition.
Fear was your child crying in another room.
Fear was realizing the people you trusted might have built your childhood on a lie.
Fear was reading your dead father’s handwriting and discovering your entire family history had been edited.
“Elisa stays with me tonight,” Sofia said.
“No.”
“Sebastian.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re about to chase a seventeen-year-old family secret while half the Moretti relatives are downstairs. She shouldn’t be anywhere near this.”
She was right.
I hated that.
Sofia touched my arm.
“She’ll be at my house. Marcus can put security there.”
I looked at Elisa.
“Want a sleepover with Aunt Sofia?”
“And pancakes?”
“Probably.”
“Chocolate?”
“No.”
Sofia said, “Yes.”
“Traitor.”
Elisa smiled.
That smile decided it.
Twenty minutes later, Marcus escorted Sofia and Elisa through a private exit.
I returned to my father’s old study.
The room had been locked for years except for family gatherings.
Preston was waiting there.
So was Lucinda.
She had changed.
Not clothing.
Something deeper.
Her face looked twenty years older.
I locked the door.
“Start talking.”
Lucinda sat.
Preston remained standing.
“You read only the beginning?” she asked.
“I got through your names.”
“Then you don’t know.”
“No. Which is why we’re here.”
Lucinda looked at Preston.
He shook his head.
She ignored him.
“Your mother didn’t die in that car.”
I felt the room tilt.
“What?”
“The accident happened. But Elena survived it.”
I stared at her.
“That’s impossible.”
“It isn’t.”
“I went to her funeral.”
Lucinda closed her eyes.
“There was no viewing.”
“Because you told me the injuries were too severe.”
“Yes.”
My mouth went dry.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the coffin was empty.”
For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.
I remembered being nine.
Wearing a suit that scratched my neck.
Holding my father’s hand.
Watching a polished mahogany coffin lowered into the ground.
Crying until I threw up behind the church.
“You buried an empty coffin.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Preston stepped in.
“That’s enough.”
I crossed the room and slammed him against the bookcase.
“No. It stopped being enough seventeen years ago.”
He didn’t fight.
That frightened me more.
“Where was my mother?”
Lucinda whispered, “Alive.”
I released Preston and turned.
“Where?”
“She disappeared.”
“People don’t disappear.”
“In our family, they do.”
I pulled the letter out.
Preston grabbed my arm.
“Before you read the rest, understand something. Your father didn’t write that because he wanted you to investigate.”
“Then why?”
“He wanted you to survive.”
I unfolded the pages.
There were six.
I read faster.
My father described the night of my mother’s crash.
A truck forced her vehicle from the road.
Preston reached the scene before police.
Lucinda arrived twenty minutes later.
They found Elena conscious.
Terrified.
And saying one thing repeatedly:
“He knows I found the ledger.”
I looked up.
“What ledger?”
Neither spoke.
I continued reading.
My father had hidden documents proving that someone inside the Moretti organization had been stealing from the family for decades, laundering money through legitimate companies, bribing officials, and arranging violence against anyone who discovered it.
At the bottom of page three, my father had written:
Elena discovered the identity of the person behind everything.
Page four was missing.
I checked the envelope.
Empty.
“Where is page four?”
Lucinda’s face went white.
Preston muttered a curse.
“You removed it.”
“No,” Lucinda said.
“Then who?”
A knock hit the study door.
Marcus entered without waiting.
His expression was grim.
“We found the surveillance footage from the blackout.”
“And?”
“The man who tried to take the letter wasn’t a guest.”
“Who was he?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Marcus placed his phone on the desk.
The paused image showed a man in catering clothing.
Cap low.
Face partially hidden.
But something was visible on his wrist.
A tattoo.
A black crown wrapped by a serpent.
Preston sat down hard.
Lucinda whispered, “No.”
I looked between them.
“You know it?”
Preston answered.
“That symbol belonged to your grandfather’s private crew.”
“My grandfather has been dead twelve years.”
“That’s the problem.”
Marcus zoomed in.
Beneath the crown were three initials.
V.M.C.
I recognized them.
Vittorio Moretti Consortium.
My grandfather’s original company.
A corporation dissolved after his death.
Lucinda stood abruptly.
“We need to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever sent that man knows the letter survived.”
I folded the pages.
“Good.”
Lucinda stared at me.
“You don’t understand.”
“No. But I’m starting to.”
I placed the letter inside my jacket.
“Someone buried a secret in that vase. Someone sabotaged the power to steal it. And somebody has been lying about my mother for seventeen years.”
Preston’s voice turned cold.
“Sebastian, if you keep pulling this thread, you could lose everything.”
I looked at him.
“I buried my mother when I was nine.”
Then I understood what I really meant.
“No. You made me think I did.”
I opened the study door.
“So there’s nothing left you can threaten me with.”
Marcus followed.
Behind us, Lucinda said the words that made me stop.
“Yes, there is.”
I turned.
May you like
She looked directly at me.
“Your mother may still be alive.”
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