Chapter 3 - THE DEAD MAN'S SECRET
I woke to the sound of someone saying my name.
Not respectfully.
Angrily.
“Luca.”
I opened my eyes.
White ceiling.
Hospital lights.
A cardiac monitor.
Gabriel Russo stood beside the bed with his left arm in a sling.
“You look terrible,” he said.
My throat felt lined with broken glass.
“Mia.”
Gabriel's expression answered before his mouth did.
“No contact.”
I ripped the oxygen line from beneath my nose.
“How long?”
“Eleven hours.”
I started sitting up.
Pain cut through my chest.
“Where are my clothes?”
“Don't.”
“Where?”
“The doctor said—”
“Gabriel.”
He exhaled.
“Closet.”
Thirty minutes later, against medical advice, I was wearing black trousers and a white shirt while a physician threatened to have security restrain me.
He reconsidered when six of my men entered the hall.
The poison had not been enough to kill me.
Elena had saved me before Mia ever entered the office.
That revelation came from Dr. Shah, the physician who had treated me.
“There was another compound in your system,” he explained. “Something that slowed absorption.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
“It means whoever administered the toxin also gave you something beforehand that reduced its immediate effect.”
Gabriel understood first.
“Elena.”
The doctor nodded.
“Possibly.”
I remembered dinner.
Elena had insisted I drink a strange herbal tea because she claimed the kitchen staff was testing a new digestif.
I had mocked it.
She had watched until I finished every drop.
She knew Marco planned to poison me.
She had been trying to keep me alive.
Gabriel drove us back to the estate.
By noon the place resembled a military compound.
Every guard had been disarmed and questioned.
Phones were confiscated.
Doors were sealed.
Five employees were missing.
All had connections to Marco.
One was my secondary security commander.
That betrayal hurt almost as much as Marco's.
Almost.
Inside my office, the broken glass had been removed, but bullet holes remained.
I walked to the secret passage.
Blood marked the floor.
Marco's.
“Search teams?”
“Three groups,” Gabriel said. “No result.”
“Vehicles?”
“Marco never used one registered to us.”
“Cameras?”
“Looped.”
“Financials?”
“Working on it.”
I turned.
“Not good enough.”
Gabriel didn't react.
That was why I trusted him.
Most men became frightened when I raised my voice.
Gabriel became quieter.
“We found something downstairs.”
The basement smelled of stone and bleach.
Marco had kept Elena inside an old wine-storage room that hadn't been used since my father was alive.
There was a chair in the center.
Rope.
Blood.
A child's pink sweater.
I picked it up.
Mia's.
My jaw locked.
On the floor rested a broken vial.
Nearby, someone had scratched four letters into the stone with a metal object.
T.O.M.A.
“Tomas,” Gabriel said.
Elena's husband.
Tomas Rossi had died four years earlier in what police classified as a freeway accident.
I remembered the funeral.
Elena had been pregnant.
Marco had attended.
He had carried the coffin.
The memory made me nauseous.
“What did Tomas do for us?”
Gabriel frowned.
“Officially?”
“Yes.”
“Accounting.”
“Unofficially?”
Gabriel hesitated.
“He performed internal audits for your father.”
I looked at him.
“You knew?”
“Not until this morning.”
“Who told you?”
“Your father's old attorney.”
That got my attention.
“Samuel DeLuca?”
Gabriel nodded.
Samuel had disappeared from public life after my father's death.
He was eighty-one now.
If he was talking, something had frightened him.
We found him waiting inside the estate chapel.
He looked smaller than I remembered.
But his eyes were sharp.
“You look like Antonio,” he said.
“My father is dead.”
“Yes.”
Samuel studied my face.
“And his secrets should have died with him.”
I walked closer.
“They didn't.”
Samuel held a thick envelope.
The wax seal carried my father's initials.
A.M.
“I was instructed to give you this only if Elena Rossi or her daughter became endangered by a member of the family.”
“Why?”
“Because your father was a coward.”
My men stiffened.
Nobody insulted Antonio Moretti inside his own house.
I raised one hand.
Samuel continued.
“Tomas Rossi wasn't merely your accountant.”
“I know.”
“No.”
His voice softened.
“You don't.”
He handed me the envelope.
My father's handwriting covered the front.
For Luca, if the family turns against the child.
Child.
Singular.
My chest tightened.
I broke the seal.
Inside were photographs.
Bank records.
A DNA report.
And a letter.
I read the first paragraph.
Then again.
My father had written it six months before his death.
Luca, if you are reading this, then I failed twice—first as a father, and then as a man.
I continued.
Thirty-three years earlier, before marrying my mother, Antonio Moretti had maintained a relationship with a woman named Sofia Rossi.
She became pregnant.
Antonio paid her to disappear.
The child grew up believing another man was his father.
That child's name was Tomas.
I stopped reading.
“No.”
Samuel said nothing.
I looked at the DNA report.
Probability of half-sibling relationship between Luca Moretti and Tomas Rossi:
99.87 percent.
The room became silent.
Tomas had been my brother.
Elena's husband had been my brother.
And Mia—
I sank onto the chapel pew.
Mia was my niece.
Biologically.
The little girl who called me Uncle Luca as a childish nickname had been telling the truth without knowing it.
Gabriel swore under his breath.
I read the rest.
Tomas learned the truth while auditing family accounts.
He confronted Antonio.
My father secretly acknowledged him but refused to make the truth public because he feared destabilizing the organization.
Then Tomas discovered something worse.
Money disappearing.
Weapons moved without authorization.
Payments made to rival crews.
All connected to Marco.
Tomas had been building a case.
Three weeks later, his car went through a highway barrier.
Samuel looked at me.
“Elena never believed it was an accident.”
“Why didn't she tell me?”
“Because Tomas had warned her that Marco controlled people near you.”
I remembered every decision.
Every time Marco told me someone couldn't be trusted.
Every guard he recommended.
Every captain he removed.
He had spent years isolating me.
“Elena knew Mia was my niece?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Since before Tomas died.”
I stared down at the photograph attached to the DNA report.
Tomas looked enough like me that I wondered how I had never noticed.
Same eyes.
Same jaw.
A quieter smile.
Samuel continued.
“Antonio created a trust for Tomas's descendants.”
My eyes lifted.
“How much?”
“Money isn't the important part.”
“With my family it usually is.”
Samuel's expression hardened.
“The trust includes thirty-one percent ownership of legitimate Moretti Holdings.”
I went still.
That was enough to determine board control when combined with certain voting blocks.
“Marco knows.”
Samuel nodded.
“Tomas discovered the ownership documents shortly before his death.”
Now everything made sense.
Marco hadn't only taken Mia as leverage against me.
He needed her because, legally, she stood between him and control of the Moretti fortune.
A phone rang.
Gabriel answered.
His eyes immediately changed.
“What?”
He put it on speaker.
Static.
Then Elena's voice.
“Luca?”
I stood.
“Elena.”
She sounded terrified.
“Mia is alive.”
“Where are you?”
“I don't know. Some warehouse. I can hear trains.”
“Is Marco there?”
“Yes.”
A muffled sob sounded.
Mia.
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Uncle Luca?”
My chest broke open.
“I'm here, sweetheart.”
“Marco says you're sleeping forever.”
“No.”
I forced calm into my voice.
“I'm awake.”
“Are you still the boss?”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
“Yes.”
Mia whispered something away from the phone.
Then returned.
“I told him.”
There was a crash.
Elena cried out.
Marco came onto the line.
“You should have stayed dead.”
“Touch either of them again and there won't be enough of you left to bury.”
“That's the Luca I remember.”
“Tell me where.”
“Soon.”
“Marco—”
“But first you should ask Samuel something.”
I looked toward the old attorney.
His face drained of color.
Marco laughed.
“Ask him who actually ordered Tomas Rossi's death.”
The connection died.
I slowly lowered the phone.
Samuel was no longer looking at me.
“Samuel.”
His hands trembled.
“Look at me.”
He didn't.
Gabriel stepped toward him.
“Samuel.”
Finally the old man raised his eyes.
There was guilt in them.
Not fear.
Guilt.
I felt something cold open inside my chest.
“My father knew?”
Samuel swallowed.
May you like
Then he said the four words that changed everything.
“Antonio gave the order.”
