Chapter 12 - The Island Account
Helena's nurse was named Evelyn Shaw.
She was fifty-eight, licensed, experienced, and missing before Lucia learned anyone wanted to speak with her.
Evelyn had cared for Helena during the final three weeks at home.
She had left the Moretti estate at nine forty on the night before Helena collapsed.
According to the security log, she had returned at six twelve the next morning.
According to Salvatore DeLuca, nothing unusual happened between those times.
Lucia no longer considered Salvatore a reliable source for weather.
She called him from Daniel's office.
"Come to Martin Bell's conference room."
Salvatore paused.
"Now?"
"Now."
"Is Giovanni there?"
"No."
"Then I will speak to him first."
Lucia felt her anger sharpen.
"Mother left photographs."
Silence.
"What photographs?"
"Come find out."
Salvatore ended the call.
He did not come.
His phone went offline four minutes later.
Marco sent two investigators to his apartment.
It was empty.
His passport was gone.
So were two suitcases.
Giovanni reacted to the news with denial so immediate that Lucia almost pitied him.
"Salvatore would not run."
"He already did."
"He has been beside me for thirty years."
"Exactly."
"You do not know what those photographs mean."
Lucia placed them on the library table.
"He handed Carlo a pharmacy bag."
"That could be anything."
"He lied about Carlo entering the estate."
"Did he?"
"The service entrance log was deleted."
"Then how do you know?"
"Mother's investigator photographed him."
Giovanni looked at Carlo's face in the image.
"Why did Helena not tell me?"
Lucia's patience broke.
"Because every time she found something ugly, you asked why she did not tell you instead of asking why it happened."
Giovanni stared at her.
The room went quiet.
Lucia regretted the cruelty but not the point.
"You keep making yourself the betrayed person in Mother's investigation."
Giovanni looked down at the photographs.
"Maybe that is because I was."
Lucia softened slightly.
"Then help us instead of defending men who lied to you."
Giovanni nodded once.
It was not agreement.
It was surrender to the possibility.
While Marco searched for Salvatore, Daniel's financial team traced the Orison transfers through the Cayman structure.
The money moved from Moretti Maritime to Orison Strategic Partners.
From Orison, it moved to a fund called Meridian Infrastructure Seven.
Meridian then transferred most of it into an account held by Blue Arc Nominees on Cayman Brac.
The beneficial owner was hidden behind a trust.
The trustee was not.
Clarissa recognized the name immediately.
"Vassallo Fiduciary Services."
Emilio looked at her.
"Your family?"
"My mother's cousin owned it years ago."
"Years ago?"
"It was sold."
Daniel slid the corporate record toward her.
"To whom?"
Clarissa read the page.
Her face tightened.
"A Bellandi holding company."
Lucia looked at Emilio.
"So Mother's money traveled through a fake consultant into a fund and ended in an account controlled by the Bellandis."
Emilio rubbed both hands over his face.
"I understand how it looks."
"It looks like exactly what it is."
"I did not know the beneficial owner."
Daniel spoke without sympathy.
"That may affect intent."
"May?"
"You signed false invoices."
"I was told-"
"Stop saying what you were told."
Daniel's voice sharpened.
"You are a forty-year-old executive, not a child who signed a permission slip."
Emilio stared at him.
"You enjoy this."
"No."
Daniel closed the file.
"I recognize it."
"Recognize what?"
"The moment a Moretti man discovers consequences were not invented by his father."
Giovanni looked away.
Lucia felt the line strike all three men at once.
Clarissa broke the silence.
"There was another account."
Daniel looked at her.
"What account?"
"Blue Arc was not the final destination."
"How do you know?"
"Carlo showed me a statement once."
"Why?"
"He wanted me to convince Emilio the money was still inside an infrastructure vehicle."
"Where did it actually go?"
Clarissa hesitated.
"A numbered account in Malta."
Daniel's expression hardened.
"Number?"
"I remember the last four digits."
"Which are?"
Clarissa swallowed.
"3146."
Marco, who had been silent near the door, looked up.
"Mrs. Moretti had that number in her ledger."
Lucia opened the black book.
They found it on page thirty-two.
3146 - C.M. + S.D. split after closing.
Giovanni read the initials.
"Carlo and Salvatore."
Emilio leaned over the page.
"Split what?"
Clarissa answered.
"A success fee."
Lucia stared.
"For selling the terminals?"
"For getting you to sign away operating control."
Emilio pushed away from the table.
"How much?"
"Twenty-four million."
No one spoke.
Emilio laughed once.
It sounded like something breaking.
"They were paying each other twenty-four million to make me look like the thief."
Daniel corrected him.
"You were still stealing."
Emilio turned on him.
"You cannot let me have one sentence, can you?"
"Not a false one."
Lucia stepped between them.
"Enough."
She looked at Clarissa.
"Did you receive part of the fee?"
Clarissa nodded.
"Two hundred thousand."
Emilio stared at her.
"You were paid to date me?"
"No."
"That sounds like yes."
"I was paid to make the introduction."
"And the rest was charity?"
Clarissa's face crumpled for half a second.
"I gave the money back."
"When?"
"Three months ago."
"To Carlo?"
"To my mother's care account."
Emilio laughed bitterly.
"So I paid for the woman who raised you to hate my family."
"No."
Clarissa stood.
"Your mother's company did."
The sentence was worse.
Emilio walked out.
Lucia started after him.
Giovanni stopped her.
"Let him go."
"He is not safe alone."
"Neither is anyone near him when he is angry."
Lucia hated that her father knew his son so well and had still allowed him to become this man.
Daniel's phone rang.
He answered and listened.
"Venn is awake."
They reached the hospital forty minutes later.
Daniel entered Venn's room first with two agents.
Lucia and Giovanni waited outside until the doctor agreed to speak with them.
Elias Venn looked smaller than he had in clinic photographs.
His skin was gray with exhaustion.
A bandage covered one side of his forehead.
"Mrs. Moretti," he whispered when he saw Lucia.
"Lucia."
"You look like her."
"Everyone keeps saying that now that she is gone."
Venn closed his eyes.
"I am sorry."
Lucia sat beside the bed.
"Your note said to ask Mother's nurse who changed the tea."
Venn's eyes opened.
"Evelyn."
"She is missing."
Fear moved across his face.
"Then find her."
"What did she tell you?"
Venn looked toward Daniel.
"She called me the morning Mrs. Moretti collapsed."
"Why?"
"She found a medication bottle in the waste bin beside the kitchen."
Lucia's pulse accelerated.
"The sedative?"
"Yes."
"How did she know it was there?"
"She recognized the label."
"Whose name was on it?"
Venn swallowed.
"Helena's."
Giovanni gripped the foot of the bed.
"With your forged prescription."
"Yes."
"Who filled it?"
"A pharmacy in Queens."
Daniel looked at one of the agents.
The agent made a note.
Lucia leaned closer.
"What does tea have to do with it?"
Venn's breathing became shallow.
"Evelyn said Mrs. Moretti refused the tablets."
"Clarissa already told us."
"Evelyn knew because Helena showed her the bottle and said she did not trust it."
"Then how did the drug get into her blood?"
Venn looked at Lucia.
"The night before she collapsed, Helena drank chamomile tea before bed."
Lucia remembered the cup often placed beside her mother's books.
"Evelyn made it?"
"She started to."
"Started to?"
"She told me someone else took the tray upstairs."
Lucia's hands went cold.
"Who?"
Venn closed his eyes as if the answer frightened him even in a hospital guarded by federal agents.
"Salvatore DeLuca."
Giovanni stepped back from the bed.
The betrayal finally reached him.
"Salvatore served her the tea."
Venn nodded.
"Evelyn said he told her Giovanni wanted to speak privately with Helena and dismissed her early."
Lucia turned toward her father.
"Did you?"
"No."
"Were you home?"
"I was at the club until after midnight."
Daniel looked at him sharply.
"Who can confirm that?"
"Half the dining room."
Venn continued.
"Evelyn returned because she forgot her blood pressure cuff."
Lucia leaned closer.
"What did she see?"
"She saw Carlo coming down the back staircase."
Giovanni's face changed.
"And Salvatore?"
"In the kitchen washing the teapot."
No one spoke.
Daniel asked the next question.
"Why did Evelyn call you instead of police?"
Venn looked ashamed.
"Because she thought I had prescribed the medication."
"And when you told her you had not?"
"She panicked."
"Where did you tell her to go?"
"To my clinic."
"Did she come?"
"No."
"Why?"
Venn's eyes moved toward Lucia.
"She left me a voicemail."
Daniel took out his phone.
"Do you still have it?"
"My phone was taken when I was attacked."
"Cloud backup?"
"Maybe."
Marco stepped into the room.
"We found Evelyn's apartment."
Lucia stood.
"Is she there?"
"No."
"Signs of a struggle?"
"Yes."
Giovanni's face hardened.
"Blood?"
"No."
Lucia exhaled.
Marco continued.
"But we recovered a home answering machine from a closet."
Daniel looked at him.
"Anything on it?"
"One saved message from Evelyn to herself."
"Play it."
Marco held up a recorder.
Evelyn's frightened voice filled the room.
"If something happens to me, it was not the prescription that killed Helena."
A breath.
Then another.
"It was what they put in the tea."
The recording crackled.
Evelyn began to say a name.
"And the person who brought it upstairs was-"
The message cut off.
The broken voicemail left everyone staring at the speaker after the sound stopped.
Giovanni replayed it twice.
The third time, Daniel took the recorder from him.
"Listening harder will not restore the missing word."
Giovanni looked at him.
"You sound like her."
Daniel's expression tightened.
"People keep telling me that now that she is dead."
The sentence hurt the room into silence.
Lucia looked at Emilio.
He was staring at the floor again.
"If Evelyn is alive, we find her before Carlo does."
Marco nodded.
"And if Carlo already found her?"
Lucia looked at Helena's ledger.
"Then we make sure he cannot erase what she already told other people."
May you like
It was the first time Lucia heard herself speak like her mother without trying.
