Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN BEFORE METhe discovery that changed my understanding of Luca didn’t come from a lawyer, an investigator, or a computer.
It came from a woman named Allison Reed.
She messaged me three days after Wendy’s Facebook post.
You don’t know me, but I knew Luca before you did. If he’s calling you unstable, we need to talk.
I almost ignored her.
Then she sent a photograph.
Luca.
Ten years younger.
Standing beside a blonde woman I had never seen.
His arm around her waist.
I called.
Allison answered on the second ring.
“I’ve been waiting years for this conversation,” she said.
She and Luca had been engaged.
That part alone shocked me.
Luca had told me he’d had serious relationships but never mentioned a fiancée.
They lived together for nearly three years.
Wendy hated Allison.
“She thought I wasn’t good enough,” Allison said. “Wrong family. Wrong career. Wrong everything.”
The pattern was familiar.
Criticism disguised as concern.
Insults disguised as jokes.
Constant pressure.
Then Luca’s business began struggling for the first time.
Allison had savings from an inheritance.
Suddenly, Wendy became interested in whether Allison was “emotionally stable enough to manage money.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What happened?”
“Luca started documenting me.”
The same photographs.
The same out-of-context messages.
The same claims that she became irrational.
One night Allison discovered an email draft describing her as “volatile and financially irresponsible.”
She confronted Luca.
He denied everything.
Then Wendy told people Allison had threatened the family.
“I left,” she said.
“Did they take your money?”
“No. That’s what saved me. We weren’t married, and the inheritance was protected.”
“Why didn’t you report any of this?”
“Report what? Being called crazy? Having a boyfriend take pictures of me crying? There wasn’t enough.”
“Did Wendy ever hit you?”
“No.”
She paused.
“But she shoved me once.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did Luca see it?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“Asked what I had done to upset her.”
Same man.
Different woman.
Same answer.
“What made you contact me now?”
“Someone sent me Wendy’s post.”
“Who?”
“Mara.”
I almost smiled.
Mara had quietly become the bravest Romano I knew.
Allison agreed to speak with Denise.
Her story alone couldn’t prove what was happening now.
But patterns mattered, particularly when Luca claimed his concerns about my mental state had developed spontaneously.
His history suggested otherwise.
Then another person came forward.
Luca’s former business manager, Theo Banks.
Theo had resigned six months earlier.
He told Martin that Romano Development was not merely struggling.
Someone had falsified financial projections to secure a bank loan.
“Who?” I asked.
“He can’t prove it yet,” Martin said.
“But he believes Luca signed off.”
“And Wendy?”
“She handled the company’s financial administration.”
The walls were collapsing from different directions.
Family court.
Trust records.
Forged medical consent.
Fabricated screenshots.
Business loans.
False financial projections.
It would have been satisfying if I weren’t also grieving.
Because each new discovery didn’t merely hurt Luca.
It erased another memory.
The first apartment we rented.
The weekend in Asheville where he proposed.
The way he cried when Fiona was born.
Had any of it been real?
Rachel finally asked me the question I was avoiding.
“Do you still love him?”
I sat beside Fiona’s crib in her guest room.
“Yes.”
Rachel looked surprised.
I wasn’t.
Love does not vanish the moment somebody becomes undeserving of it.
Sometimes that is what makes betrayal unbearable.
“I love who I thought he was,” I said.
“That person may never have existed.”
The supervised visits began.
I chose not to attend.
A licensed supervisor observed Luca with Fiona.
The first report said he was affectionate and appropriate.
That hurt too.
Because Fiona loved him.
When she saw him, she ran to him.
“Daddy!”
I cried in my car afterward.
This story would have been simpler if he had been cruel every second of every day.
He wasn’t.
Human beings rarely are.
He could make pancakes shaped like bears.
He could spend an hour building blocks with Fiona.
He knew exactly which song calmed her during thunderstorms.
And he had still used her as part of a plan to control her trust.
Both realities existed.
That was the lesson I hated most.
On the third supervised visit, Luca gave the supervisor a sealed envelope and asked her to hand it to me.
Inside was a handwritten letter.
Jessi, I know how this looks. Mom went too far. I was trying to protect the company and protect our future. I never wanted Fiona hurt. I thought if you agreed she needed evaluation, the trust could help pay for treatment and we could stabilize the business without losing everything. I know I handled it wrong. Please meet me without lawyers. I can explain all of it.
I read the paragraph twice.
Then again.
He had accidentally admitted the connection.
Fiona’s “treatment.”
The trust.
The business.
Denise almost laughed when she saw it.
“Keep this original somewhere safe.”
I did.
I refused the private meeting.
Luca sent another message.
You’re making me into a criminal.
I replied:
I am documenting what happened.
He wrote:
You don’t understand what Mom is capable of when she thinks she’s losing everything.
That sentence scared me.
What does that mean?
No answer.
Two nights later, someone broke into our marital home.
I knew because the security company called at 2:14 a.m.
Police arrived before I did.
Nothing obvious was stolen.
Television still there.
Jewelry still there.
Computers still there.
But Luca’s home-office drawer had been emptied.
The envelope marked FIONA was gone.
So were several financial documents.
“Who knew those documents were there?” the officer asked.
“Me. Luca. Possibly Wendy.”
“Was there forced entry?”
“No.”
“Who has keys?”
I listed them.
Me.
Luca.
And Wendy.
The security camera covering the driveway had gone offline fourteen minutes before the door opened.
Not broken.
Disconnected through the account.
Only two people had administrator access.
Luca and me.
Except when the security company checked the login record, the system had been accessed from Luca’s credentials.
He denied doing it.
For once, I believed him.
Why?
Because the access location showed Romano Development’s office.
And at 2:00 that morning, Luca was at home under an electronically verified temporary residence arrangement following the custody dispute.
So who was inside the office?
Police requested building security footage.
At 1:41 a.m., a woman entered using an employee code.
Burgundy coat.
Blonde hair.
Sixty-one years old.
Wendy.
By morning, officers were asking her questions.
She claimed she entered the office to retrieve tax papers.
She claimed she never touched Luca’s security account.
She claimed she never visited our house.
Then investigators found traffic-camera footage of her car three blocks from our neighborhood at 2:37 a.m.
Still circumstantial.
Still not enough on its own.
But Wendy was losing control.
That afternoon, Luca called Denise.
Not his own attorney.
Mine.
He wanted to talk.
Denise told him she could not advise him and instructed him to contact his counsel.
His reply:
“My mother is destroying evidence.”
An hour later, Luca’s attorney contacted Denise.
They proposed a formal meeting.
Luca was ready to disclose everything he knew about the plan surrounding Fiona.
There was one condition.
He wanted assurance that I would not try to permanently prevent him from seeing his daughter.
I refused to make that promise.
Fiona’s safety was not a bargaining chip.
But I agreed to hear what he had to say through the attorneys.
The meeting happened the next morning.
Luca walked in looking twenty years older.
He sat across from me.
For the first time since the birthday, he could barely meet my eyes.
Then he said:
“My mother didn’t come up with the trust plan.”
I waited.
May you like
He swallowed.
“I did.”
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