Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO LET GO OF HIS DAUGHTER
“Come to your father's cabin alone, Dante. Or the truth about Isabella dies with me.”
Vanessa's voice echoed through the captain's radio.
Dante Moretti stood motionless, holding his dead sister's silver bracelet.
Across the office, Emma Collins was still dripping seawater onto the expensive carpet. Her cheek had begun to swell where Vanessa slapped her.
Nine-year-old Lily clung to her uncle's jacket.
“Don't go,” she whispered.
Dante looked down at her.
For eighteen months, he had believed his younger sister's death was a terrible accident.
Now the woman he intended to marry had thrown Isabella's daughter into the ocean.
And someone had stolen the only recording that might explain why Isabella died.
He knelt before Lily.
“Listen to me, sweetheart. You're going to stay with Emma and the doctor.”
“Vanessa said you'd get mad at me.”
Dante's jaw tightened.
“I'm not mad at you.”
“She said nobody would believe me.”
He touched her wet hair.
“I believe you.”
Lily hesitated.
“Even if Grandpa says different?”
That question struck harder than anything Vanessa had said.
Dante looked toward the captain.
“Raymond, nobody leaves this yacht. Nobody deletes anything. Make copies of tonight's recording and secure them somewhere Vanessa can't reach.”
Captain Raymond Hale nodded.
“And your father?”
Dante closed his hand around the bracelet.
“I'm about to find out.”
Before leaving, he turned to Emma.
“You saved her life.”
Emma looked exhausted.
“I just heard her scream.”
“And you jumped.”
“Anybody would've.”
Dante shook his head.
“Vanessa didn't.”
He walked out without another word.
The corridor leading to his father's private cabin was quiet.
Too quiet.
Outside, the yacht moved gently against the dark Atlantic. The lights of the Florida coastline shimmered in the distance.
Dante had purchased the forty-million-dollar vessel five years earlier.
He had named it Isabella.
After his sister's death, he had considered selling it.
His father, Vittorio Moretti, had insisted they keep it.
“Your sister loved this boat,” Vittorio had told him. “Don't let one terrible night erase her happiest memories.”
Dante had believed him.
Now he wondered how many other things he'd believed simply because his father said them.
He reached the cabin.
The door stood open.
Vanessa waited beside the desk, still wearing her white designer dress.
A black security drive rested beside a framed family photograph.
Dante recognized the drive immediately.
“Give me that.”
Vanessa placed her hand over it.
“Not until you listen.”
“Take your hand off it.”
She flinched at his tone.
For the first time since he'd known her, Vanessa looked genuinely frightened.
Not embarrassed.
Not angry.
Frightened.
“You don't understand what happened eighteen months ago.”
“I understand what happened tonight.”
He placed his phone on the desk.
The security footage was already playing.
Vanessa watched herself grab Lily and push her over the railing.
Then Emma appeared, running toward the water.
Vanessa turned away.
“Turn it off.”
“Look at her.”
“Dante—”
“Look at the child you threw into the ocean.”
Vanessa's lips trembled.
“She was asking questions she shouldn't have been asking.”
Dante stared at her.
“She's nine.”
“You think I don't know that?”
“Then explain how you could do it.”
Vanessa pressed both hands against the desk.
“Lily found that bracelet yesterday. She brought it to me and started asking why I had kept something that belonged to her mother.”
Dante looked at the silver bracelet in his hand.
“You had it?”
Vanessa nodded.
“I kept it after the accident.”
“Why?”
“Because your father gave it to me.”
Dante's expression changed.
His father had told him Isabella's bracelet had been lost at sea.
He remembered how Lily had cried over it.
For weeks, the little girl had searched her mother's jewelry boxes, convinced that someone had simply misplaced it.
And all that time, Vanessa had known exactly where it was.
“Why would my father give you Isabella's bracelet?”
Vanessa lowered her voice.
“Because he needed me to keep quiet.”
Dante stepped closer.
“About what?”
She pointed toward the security drive.
“Your sister discovered money disappearing from the Moretti Family Children's Foundation.”
Dante stopped.
The foundation had been Isabella's greatest achievement.
It paid for transportation and medical care for families who couldn't afford specialized treatment.
She had personally approved many of the grants.
“That's impossible.”
“Is it?”
Vanessa gave a bitter little laugh.
“Your father was moving millions through Whitmore Marine subsidiaries. Isabella found the transfers.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Ask him.”
Dante glanced at the drive.
“And this recording?”
“Your sister confronted him that night. The camera caught part of their argument.”
“Play it.”
Vanessa hesitated.
“Promise me I won't be handed over to the police.”
Dante stared at her.
“You threw a child overboard.”
“I panicked.”
“You made a decision.”
Her face crumpled.
“I didn't think she'd go over. I grabbed her because she threatened to tell you everything, and she pulled away.”
Dante pointed to his phone.
“The camera shows you shoving her with both hands.”
Vanessa had no answer.
He reached across the desk and took the drive.
Then he connected it to the cabin's computer.
Several folders appeared.
The newest was dated eighteen months earlier.
Inside was a damaged video file.
The picture flickered.
Isabella appeared on the aft deck wearing a pale yellow raincoat.
She was thirty-two, with Dante's dark hair and their mother's gray eyes.
Dante gripped the desk.
He hadn't seen his sister moving or speaking since her funeral.
Watching her alive again hurt more than he'd imagined possible.
In the recording, Vittorio approached her.
There was no sound at first.
Then the audio returned.
“Dad, you have to tell Dante,” Isabella said.
Vittorio shook his head.
“You don't understand what it will cost him.”
“Then let him decide.”
“Give me the envelope, Isabella.”
She stepped backward.
Her father reached for her arm.
The picture broke into squares.
When it returned, Isabella was near the railing.
“Let go of me!” she cried.
There was a metallic crash.
Then darkness.
Dante stared at the screen.
He replayed the final seconds.
Again.
And again.
“Where's the rest?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“The file was damaged when the archive system was shut down.”
“Who shut it down?”
“Your father.”
Dante closed the computer.
His face had gone completely white.
For eighteen months, Vittorio had told the same story.
Isabella had gone outside for fresh air.
The ocean had been rough.
She had slipped.
By the time anyone noticed she was missing, it was too late.
Dante remembered standing beside his father at the funeral.
Vittorio had held Lily against his chest and promised to protect her.
Now Dante wondered whether that promise had been an apology.
“Did you see him push her?” Dante asked.
Vanessa looked away.
“I heard them arguing. That's all.”
“Then why steal the drive?”
“Because your father was going to destroy it.”
“Who used his access code tonight?”
“I gave it to someone who could retrieve the recording.”
“Who?”
Before Vanessa answered, footsteps sounded outside.
An elderly man appeared in the doorway.
Vittorio Moretti wore a dark cardigan over his pajamas.
At seventy-one, he was still imposing, despite the heart surgery that had weakened him the previous year.
His eyes moved from Vanessa to the computer.
Then to the bracelet in Dante's hand.
“Where did you get that?”
Dante stepped toward him.
“Did you kill my sister?”
Vittorio's face collapsed.
For a long moment, he couldn't speak.
Then he lowered himself into a chair.
“I never wanted you to see that recording.”
“Answer me.”
The old man covered his mouth.
Dante had seen powerful businessmen tremble before his father.
He had watched dangerous men apologize simply because Vittorio entered a room.
But he had never seen him cry.
Not even at Isabella's funeral.
Until now.
“I grabbed her,” Vittorio whispered.
Dante felt the room tilt.
“She was going to expose something that would've destroyed this family. I reached for the envelope, and she pulled away.”
“Did she fall?”
Vittorio nodded.
“Did you help her?”
Tears slid down the old man's face.
“I tried.”
Dante bent toward him.
“Did you push my sister into the ocean?”
Vittorio slowly looked up.
“I didn't mean for her to fall, son.”
Then he opened his left hand.
Inside was an old gold wristwatch, its glass cracked across the center.
The hands had stopped at 11:14.
May you like
Vittorio placed it beside Isabella's bracelet.
“And when she reached for me in the water,” he whispered, “I let go of her hand.”
