Chapter 5 - THE WRONG ADRIAN
For several seconds Adrian seemed unable to understand his daughter's words.
“Someone called him Adrian?”
Isabella nodded.
“The man with the watch.”
Gabriel stepped forward.
“Bella, are you sure?”
She shrank against Sophia.
Adrian raised a hand.
“Enough.”
Not angry.
Protective.
That surprised Sophia.
He knelt in front of Isabella instead of questioning her further.
“You don't have to remember anything else tonight.”
Isabella searched his face.
“You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I got mixed up?”
His expression softened.
“Especially then.”
It was perhaps the first time Sophia saw Adrian choose his daughter over an answer.
That mattered.
But the mystery remained.
Someone had apparently been impersonating Adrian—or Isabella's memory had combined pieces of separate moments.
Victor proposed the second possibility.
“Trauma rearranges details.”
Sophia disliked how clinical it sounded.
But he wasn't wrong.
Adrian ordered a review of security footage from the night Elena died.
Victor looked uncomfortable.
“The west corridor cameras were offline.”
“Why?”
“Scheduled maintenance.”
Gabriel laughed bitterly.
“Of course they were.”
Victor ignored him.
“One camera was functioning outside the service entrance.”
They watched the archived footage in Adrian's study.
At 7:51 p.m., Elena emerged wearing a cream coat.
At 7:52, another figure followed.
Male.
Tall.
His face remained outside the camera angle.
But his left wrist caught the light.
Silver watch.
Adrian froze the frame.
Gabriel leaned closer.
“That isn't mine.”
“How can you tell?” Sophia asked.
Gabriel held out his left arm.
A pale scar crossed the back of his hand.
The man in the video had no scar.
Adrian examined his own hand.
Nothing distinctive.
Sophia's stomach tightened.
The man's build resembled him.
His height resembled him.
His coat even resembled one Adrian had worn in family photographs.
Someone wanted witnesses to think Adrian had followed Elena.
But why?
Victor enlarged another frame.
Something protruded from the man's coat pocket.
A rosary.
Dark beads.
A silver cross.
Sophia heard Margaret gasp from behind them.
She had entered with coffee.
Adrian turned.
“You recognize it.”
Margaret put down the tray.
“Elena carried one exactly like that.”
“Where is it?”
“She lost it months ago.”
“Where?”
Margaret's eyes moved toward Gabriel.
“At the lake house.”
Gabriel's face tightened.
“I wasn't there.”
“I didn't say you were.”
“But you're thinking it.”
Margaret looked away.
The suspicion inside the mansion was becoming its own weapon.
Sophia suddenly understood that perhaps this had been the intention all along.
Not merely to hurt Elena.
To make the Morettis destroy each other afterward.
She said so.
Adrian stared at her.
Victor nodded slowly.
“Possible.”
Gabriel gave him a hard look.
“Convenient coming from the man Elena apparently encoded on a train ticket.”
Victor's restraint broke.
“I spent seven years keeping threats away from this family while you spent half that time gambling and borrowing money from people your brother had to clean up after.”
Gabriel stepped toward him.
Adrian intervened.
“Enough.”
Gabriel laughed without humor.
“You want motive? Fine. I had debts. Elena knew. She helped me settle them because I was ashamed to tell you.”
Adrian looked stunned.
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“You took money from my wife?”
“She offered.”
“You lied to me.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel's voice cracked.
“Because being your younger brother means every mistake becomes evidence that I'm weak.”
That silenced Adrian.
Another relationship fractured by fear.
Sophia thought again of Elena.
The bridge.
Perhaps Elena had been carrying everyone.
That night Isabella woke screaming.
Sophia ran from the staff room before the guards could stop her.
Emma woke too and toddled after her dragging a blanket.
Isabella sat upright in bed.
“He took Mommy's necklace!”
Sophia sat beside her.
“Who?”
“The man.”
“What necklace?”
“The little moon.”
Margaret found an old photograph.
Elena wore a delicate crescent-shaped pendant.
Adrian recognized it immediately.
“She wore that the night she died.”
“It wasn't recovered from the car,” Victor said.
Adrian's gaze sharpened.
“How do you know?”
“I read the inventory.”
Sophia looked at Isabella.
“Did you see someone take it?”
The girl squeezed her eyes shut.
“I was hiding.”
“Where?”
“Behind the curtains upstairs.”
“What did you see?”
“Mommy was mad. The man grabbed her. The necklace broke.”
“Which man?”
“I couldn't see.”
Emma climbed onto the bed.
“Don't make Bella cry.”
Sophia stopped.
Emma wrapped both arms around Isabella.
Adrian stood in the doorway looking helpless.
Then, instead of continuing the questions, he crossed the room and sat beside his daughter.
“Emma's right.”
Isabella leaned against him.
It was awkward at first.
Then Adrian wrapped his arms around her.
She cried against his chest.
Sophia quietly left them.
The following morning Emma disappeared during breakfast.
Sophia found her in the library beneath Adrian's enormous desk.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking.”
“For what?”
“Moon.”
Sophia nearly smiled.
“Sweetheart, the necklace isn't here.”
Emma pointed beneath the desk.
“Shiny.”
Something had fallen into the narrow gap between the desk and wall.
Sophia reached down.
Her fingers closed around a broken chain.
She pulled it free.
A silver crescent pendant swung from her hand.
Sophia stopped breathing.
Elena's necklace.
Adrian entered moments later.
When he saw it, every trace of color vanished from his face.
“This desk hasn't been moved in years.”
Sophia stared at him.
“Then Elena was in this room the night she died.”
“No.”
“What?”
Adrian looked at the pendant.
“I was sitting at this desk from seven until nine that night.”
Sophia felt cold.
“Was Elena here?”
“No.”
“Then how did her necklace get underneath it?”
Adrian had no answer.
But Emma did something strange.
She crawled beneath the desk again.
“There's more.”
Sophia knelt.
“What?”
Emma pulled out a tiny button.
Black.
Adrian took it.
His expression changed immediately.
Sophia looked at his coat hanging across the room.
Black wool.
Silver buttons.
“Is it yours?”
“No.”
“Whose?”
Adrian closed his fist around it.
“My father's.”
Gabriel appeared at the doorway.
For the first time, he looked genuinely terrified.
“That's impossible.”
Sophia turned.
“Why?”
Gabriel stared at the button.
“Because our father has been in a nursing facility for six years.”
Adrian's eyes remained fixed on the family crest engraved into the button.
May you like
Gabriel swallowed.
“And because the only other coat like his disappeared the week Elena died.”
