Chapter 2 - Isabella’s Study
The air inside Isabella Moretti’s study smelled faintly of cedar, dust, and something floral that should not have survived six years.
Dominic did not turn on the overhead light.
He reached past the doorframe and switched on a single green-shaded lamp beside the desk. The soft circle of light revealed a room held in suspension. Shelves full of books. A cream sofa with one velvet cushion dented from age. Framed photographs of Ethan as a baby. A vase containing dried lavender turned nearly gray.
And everywhere, falcons.
A small bronze bird on the mantel.
A silver letter opener shaped like a wing.
The same crest embossed on the leather blotter covering the desk.
I stood near the doorway, suddenly aware that I was trespassing inside a marriage I had never known.
“You don’t have to let me in,” I said.
Dominic gave a humorless smile. “You already convinced me to open the door.”
“I didn’t convince you of anything.”
“You asked the right question at the wrong hour. That’s close enough.”
He moved deeper into the room.
On the desk stood a photograph of Isabella holding a toddler Ethan at the beach. She was laughing at something beyond the frame. Ethan had both fists tangled in her hair.
Dominic looked at it without touching it.
“She hated this room by the end,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it became where she kept things from me.”
The answer surprised me.
“What things?”
“Questions.”
He opened the top desk drawer. Empty except for a fountain pen and a stack of yellowed note cards.
“About your brother?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“You ask direct questions for an employee.”
“And you moved my daughter onto your private floor because a man tried to poison your son.”
A pause.
“Fair.”
He sat in Isabella’s desk chair but did not lean back, as if touching the room too fully would be disloyal.
“Vincent and I were born two years apart. Same father, different mothers. He grew up mostly with us anyway. We fought constantly. Loved each other badly. He was smarter than me in some ways and more reckless in all of them.”
“What happened twelve years ago?”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“We were still deeper in the old business then.”
The old business.
He said it the way other families might say manufacturing or real estate. I knew enough about Dominic’s history not to ask him to define it.
“There was a war,” he continued. “People died. Vincent disappeared after a warehouse explosion near the river. Two men said they saw him go inside. The fire burned hot enough that identification was impossible. We found his watch. Blood matched him. That was enough.”
“For you?”
“No.”
The single word came immediately.
“For everyone who needed me to stop looking.”
I leaned against the edge of the bookshelf. “Including Isabella?”
He glanced at the photograph of his wife. “Especially Isabella.”
That did not fit.
“If she wanted you to stop looking, why would she later tell you to open this room?”
Dominic looked at me sharply.
“I didn’t say she told me to stop because she believed he was dead.”
The room seemed to tighten.
“Then why?”
“Because she found evidence Vincent may have been alive.”
I stared at him.
“Six years after he supposedly died, Isabella started reviewing old trust accounts for Ethan. She found payments routed through companies that should’ve been dormant. One company had a signatory using a name Vincent used when we were young.”
“What name?”
“Victor Lanza.”
I remembered the guest list being checked downstairs.
“Was Victor Lanza at the birthday party?”
“No.”
My hope dropped.
Dominic continued. “But three men connected to his investment group were.”
He opened a lower desk drawer. This one stuck halfway. Dominic pulled harder and it came free with a scraping sound.
Behind the drawer was empty space.
I noticed it at the same time he did.
“That’s too deep,” I said.
He crouched and reached into the cavity.
His fingers found metal.
A narrow silver box slid out.
I stopped breathing.
It was about the size Lily had described.
Dominic stared at it.
“Is that—”
“No.” He turned it over. “This belonged to Isabella.”
The box was embossed with a falcon on the lid.
Inside were no powders, no vials.
There was a flash drive, a small brass key, and a folded photograph.
The photograph showed five men standing on the deck of a yacht. Dominic was younger, maybe thirty. Marco Bellini stood beside him. Arturo Moretti was there too. A fourth man I did not recognize wore sunglasses.
The fifth was Vincent.
On the back Isabella had written a date.
Eight years after Vincent’s supposed death.
Dominic sat very still.
“Where was this taken?” I asked.
“Monaco.”
“You were there?”
“No.” His thumb pressed so hard against the photograph the edge bent. “That’s not me in the picture.”
I looked again.
The man I thought was Dominic had the same build and similar face, but the smile was wrong somehow.
“Who?”
“My cousin Luca.”
Dominic’s voice had gone cold.
“Then at least three people in this picture knew Vincent was alive.”
“Four,” Dominic said.
“Who’s the man with sunglasses?”
“Caleb Rhodes. Isabella’s attorney.”
“Is he alive?”
“Very.”
The flash drive was encrypted.
Dominic called Marco upstairs.
When Marco entered Isabella’s study and saw the silver box, he stopped in the doorway as if someone had struck him.
“Where did you find that?”
“Behind the drawer.”
Marco looked at the photograph.
His face turned hard.
“You knew?” Dominic asked.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me in her room.”
“I’m not.” Marco pointed at the image. “I knew Luca traveled to Monaco. I did not know Vincent was there.”
Dominic held his gaze for several seconds.
Then Lily appeared in the doorway.
I jumped. “Lily! What are you doing awake?”
She rubbed one eye, dragging her blanket behind her. “You gone.”
“I’m sorry, baby.”
She walked straight past me.
Toward the photograph.
Dominic lowered it automatically so she could see.
Lily pointed at Vincent.
“Cake man.”
Nobody moved.
Marco crouched. “Are you sure?”
Lily nodded.
“That man?”
She tapped Vincent’s face.
“Bird man.”
Dominic’s expression became frighteningly blank.
The room held seven years of grief, twelve years of presumed death, and one three-year-old who had no idea she had just resurrected a ghost.
I scooped her up.
“Okay. That’s enough questions.”
Lily rested her head on my shoulder and pointed again, this time toward the man wearing sunglasses.
“He was there too.”
Marco stood.
“Caleb Rhodes?”
Dominic looked at Lily. “At the party?”
She nodded.
I had seen Caleb Rhodes that night. Everyone had. He was one of the Moretti Foundation’s senior legal advisers, a tall man in his sixties with silver hair, a warm public smile, and a tuxedo that probably cost more than my car.
He had left the ballroom with the other guests after Dominic ended the party.
Or at least everyone assumed he had.
Marco took out his phone. “I’m checking exit logs.”
He called security downstairs.
Thirty seconds later, his face changed.
“His vehicle exited at 11:48.”
Dominic glanced at the wall clock. “The cake incident was 10:06.”
“He stayed almost two hours after the lockdown.”
“How?”
Marco listened to the person on the phone.
Then swore.
“Legal clearance override. Old family credential.”
Dominic stood so fast the desk chair rolled backward.
“Kill every legacy credential. Now.”
Marco issued the order.
I held Lily tighter.
“What’s on the drive?”
Dominic picked up the encrypted flash drive.
“We’re going to find out.”
It took Marco’s tech team forty minutes to break the first layer of encryption and another twenty to discover Isabella had password-protected individual folders. The password hint was simple:
What Ethan called the moon when he was two.
Dominic laughed once, suddenly and painfully.
“Cheese lamp.”
The password worked.
Inside were spreadsheets, photographs, copies of trusts, and four audio files.
The first file was Isabella’s voice.
“If you are hearing this, Dominic, it means I was right about Vincent.”
Ethan had come into the study by then, pale but determined. Dominic tried to send him back to bed. Ethan refused.
“She’s my mom.”
Dominic did not argue again.
Isabella continued through the speakers.
“Vincent is alive. He has been using Victor Lanza as a legal identity through shell corporations. Caleb Rhodes knows. Luca knows. I do not yet know who else.”
The room went still.
“I believe they are moving money through the Moretti Foundation and preserving a dormant succession claim tied to your father’s original holding trust. If Ethan dies before eighteen, certain voting rights revert to the male bloodline before they transfer into the permanent charitable structure.”
Dominic’s face changed.
Ethan looked at him. “What does that mean?”
Dominic did not answer quickly enough.
I understood first.
“It means somebody benefits if Ethan dies.”
Isabella’s recorded voice kept going.
“And Dominic, if you are still the man I married, do not solve this the old way. That is what they expect. They want you violent, isolated, and legally vulnerable. Protect our son. Use proof. Use daylight.”
The recording ended.
Dominic stood motionless.
His son stared at him.
So did I.
Then Lily yawned and said, “Cheese lamp funny.”
The absurdity broke something in the room.
Ethan laughed first.
Then Dominic did too—one rough, surprised breath that turned almost immediately into grief.
He put both hands on the desk and lowered his head.
For a few seconds, he was not a mafia legend or billionaire or feared man.
He was a widower hearing his wife tell him from six years away not to become the worst version of himself.
Marco’s phone buzzed.
He checked it.
“Sir.”
Dominic looked up.
“We have another problem.”
“What?”
“Caleb Rhodes’s house is empty.”
A second notification came in.
Marco read it, and all the color left his face.
“And one of our internal security supervisors just disabled his tracker.”
“Who?”
Marco swallowed.
“Matteo Russo.”
I knew Matteo.
He was the man who had walked Lily back from the garden dozens of times.
The man who brought Ethan hot chocolate after soccer practice.
The man who had access to every service camera in the mansion.
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“Find him.”
Marco was already moving.
But before he reached the door, every light on the private floor went out.
May you like
Darkness swallowed Isabella’s study.
Then somewhere down the hall, glass shattered.
