Chapter 4 - CAMILLA’S STORY
Camilla requested Domenico within six hours of her arrest.
Her attorney said it would be off the record.
Mara laughed when she heard that.
Nothing in a murder investigation involving a trust conspiracy, a sabotaged boat, and the dead woman’s ring was truly off the record anymore.
Still, Domenico agreed to a monitored meeting.
Not because he expected confession.
Because he wanted to understand how a person could stand beside him at Isabella’s funeral, hold Sofia’s hand, and then later marry into the exact family she helped fracture.
Camilla entered the interview room without handcuffs visible from the table, wearing a borrowed navy sweater and no jewelry. She looked smaller without the Bellandi house around her.
Not harmless.
Just reduced to actual scale.
Domenico sat across from her.
Mara watched through one-way glass.
Victor remained in the observation room.
Camilla spoke first.
“You hit Marco.”
Domenico almost laughed.
“That’s what you want to discuss?”
“You’ve always had a temper when you feel betrayed.”
“Isabella felt betrayed.”
Camilla’s jaw tightened.
Domenico placed a photograph of the signet ring between them.
“Why did you have this?”
She looked down.
Then back up.
“She gave it to me.”
“When?”
“At the lake.”
“Before or after you helped damage her boat?”
Camilla’s face changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
“You don’t understand what happened that weekend.”
“Then explain it.”
She leaned back.
For the first time since he met her, she stopped trying to sound compassionate.
“Isabella was going to destroy Marco.”
“Marco was stealing from my daughter.”
“He was covering a temporary bridge loss.”
“With eleven million dollars from Sofia.”
“It would have been replaced.”
Domenico stared at her.
The moral architecture of the crime was suddenly clear. They did not think of it as theft because they expected to restore the money before anyone noticed. Then losses deepened. Then Isabella discovered it. Then survival became justification.
Camilla continued.
“She was going to file that amendment, call auditors, involve prosecutors. The whole family company could have collapsed.”
“So you decided she had to collapse instead?”
Camilla flinched.
“I did not kill her.”
“Then how did you get the ring?”
Silence.
Domenico watched her carefully.
“Marco took it off her body?”
Camilla’s eyes flashed.
There.
He leaned forward.
“You weren’t supposed to know where the body was before recovery, were you?”
She said nothing.
“Camilla.”
Her composure finally cracked.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
The phrase was soft.
But it opened the door.
Domenico stayed still.
“What was supposed to happen?”
She looked at him now, eyes wet with anger instead of guilt.
“The steering was supposed to fail enough to scare her. Enough to make her miss the appointment. Marco said he could retrieve the papers and convince her to back down later.”
Domenico’s whole body went cold.
“Who altered the steering?”
“Marco arranged it.”
“And you?”
“I delayed her. I argued. I took the ring because she threw it at me.”
“That ring was on her body when she left the dock.”
Camilla looked away.
Domenico’s voice dropped.
“You were there after the crash.”
She said nothing.
He knew.
So did Mara behind the glass.
Domenico pushed the photograph closer.
“Tell me what happened after the boat hit.”
Camilla shut her eyes.
“When she didn’t answer calls, Marco took the second launch. I went with him. We found wreckage near the rocks.”
“And Isabella?”
Camilla’s breathing changed.
“In the water near the reeds.”
“Alive?”
She whispered, “Barely.”
The room seemed to shrink around him.
Domenico’s hands curled under the table.
Every instinct in him wanted to stand, overturn the chair, reach across the distance.
He stayed seated because Isabella’s last instruction was still in his head.
Protect Sofia before you protect the family name.
Protect—not avenge.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Camilla’s eyes opened.
“Marco said if we called immediately, she would live long enough to talk.”
Domenico stopped breathing.
“He said we had already gone too far. He said if the trust papers filed, Sofia’s shares would freeze, the bridge would collapse, and prosecutors would find everything.”
“And you listened.”
Camilla started crying.
Not loudly.
Not theatrically.
A slow leaking collapse.
“I froze.”
“No,” Domenico said. “You chose.”
That landed.
She wiped her face.
“Marco took the waterproof document bag from the boat. He told me to take Isabella’s ring because it might have been caught on the reeds and looked strange if recovered separately.”
“You left her in the water.”
Camilla nodded once.
Domenico stood.
The chair legs scraped harshly.
“You stood beside me at her funeral.”
Camilla looked up.
“I loved you.”
He stared at her like she had spoken in another language.
“You loved access,” he said. “You loved being the one still standing.”
Then he walked out before anger made him someone Sofia would have to fear too.
Behind the glass, Mara immediately entered the interview room with the prosecutor.
The meeting had given them everything they needed to elevate the case.
By evening, Marco was charged with murder, conspiracy, trust fraud, and obstruction.
Camilla faced murder-related complicity, conspiracy, fraud, evidence concealment, and later charges tied to manipulating Sofia during the years after Isabella’s death.
But one question remained.
Where was the document bag Marco removed from the wreckage?
The answer came from Sofia.
Not because she knew the bag.
Because she remembered a phrase.
During therapy, Leona asked what Marco used to say after the lake trip.
Sofia drew a black rectangle beneath the old chapel on the Bellandi property.
“Uncle Marco said, ‘Dead women can’t open crypts.’”
Domenico received the call from Leona at 7:20 p.m.
By 8:05, Enzo and police were standing inside the Bellandi family chapel with a warrant.
Beneath a loose stone behind Isabella’s memorial plaque, they found a waterproof black satchel.
Inside were the original trust amendment, marina repair invoices, and Isabella’s handwritten chronology of Marco and Camilla’s theft.
Four years buried under the place where the family came to mourn her.
Camilla's confession did not end with the lake.
Once the first lie cracked, others followed.
Under continued questioning, she admitted that after Isabella's funeral she and Marco searched the house for weeks. They knew Isabella had copied documents but not where she hid them. They opened desks, checked safe-deposit records, questioned staff under the pretense of estate inventory, and even replaced the felt bottoms on several decorative objects to see whether anything had been hidden beneath them.
They missed the vase because Isabella had restored the felt herself.
"Why keep searching after she was dead?" Mara asked.
Camilla stared at the table. "Because Marco never believed she only made one copy."
He was right.
The bank box and chapel bag proved it.
Camilla also admitted deliberately moving closer to Domenico after the funeral. The first invitations were calculated. The charitable committee meeting. The grief fundraiser. The private dinner where she sat beside him because another guest "happened" to cancel.
"Did you love him then?" Mara asked.
Camilla's face tightened.
"I don't know when strategy became love."
Domenico, watching from behind the glass, felt nothing but revulsion at the sentence.
For years he had tried to separate the real marriage from the conspiracy underneath it, as if perhaps some middle period remained uncontaminated. Camilla's answer showed the futility. Even she could not identify the border.
The prosecution also confronted her with the insurance rider and the altered psychiatric notes.
Camilla admitted introducing Dr. Vance to Marco and supplying him with descriptions of Isabella's supposed symptoms.
"Did Isabella know you were doing that?" the prosecutor asked.
"Near the end."
"How?"
"She found an email."
"What did she say?"
Camilla looked away.
"She called me a thief who wanted to steal her life one room at a time."
Domenico closed his eyes.
That sounded exactly like Isabella.
Sharp. Precise. Unforgiving when she finally named the thing.
Camilla's bail hearing the following morning became its own public reckoning. Her attorney argued she had cooperated and posed no danger. Mara introduced the two passports found in her luggage, her attempted airport transfer, and evidence she contacted a Vale accountant after the vase broke with the message: Burn old copies. He knows.
Bail was denied.
Sofia did not watch the hearing, but she heard adults discussing it and asked what "cooperated" meant.
Leona answered, "It means telling the truth after not telling it for a long time."
"Does that make it good?"
"It makes it better than continuing to lie. It doesn't erase what came before."
Sofia considered that.
At dinner that night, Domenico apologized to her for something more specific.
"I let Camilla correct the way you remembered Mama," he said. "Sometimes I even told you to stop asking because I thought it hurt too much. I was wrong."
Sofia stirred pasta with her fork.
"You were sad."
He almost accepted the comfort.
Then he stopped.
"I was sad," he said. "And I was still responsible."
Sofia looked up.
The distinction seemed to matter.
"Okay," she said.
Then, after a moment, "You can be sad and responsible at the same time?"
"Apparently."
She nodded solemnly.
"That's inconvenient."
Domenico laughed for the first time in days.
"Very."
May you like
The laugh did not erase anything.
It simply proved their house still had room for sounds not produced by fear.
