Chapter 11 - The Senator's Question
Aleandro left Valentina's hospital room without saying goodbye.
Senator Dominic Romano was still waiting in the corridor, flanked by two attorneys and four security men.
"Well?"
Aleandro stopped in front of him.
"Why did you ask your daughter when my engraved glass would be served?"
Dominic's face remained composed, but one of the attorneys looked at him too quickly.
Aleandro saw it.
"I ask a thousand questions before an event."
"That was not your event."
"It was my daughter's engagement."
"You asked about my glass."
Dominic stepped closer.
"My daughter nearly died, and you are interrogating me because she remembers some meaningless conversation?"
"Meaningless conversations do not usually precede poisoned champagne."
The senator's eyes hardened.
"Be careful."
Aleandro almost smiled.
"You came into my home, ordered police to arrest an innocent woman, and let your daughter lie under oath while someone tried to kill me."
He lowered his voice.
"Do not confuse my restraint with uncertainty."
Dominic's attorney intervened.
"Mr. Moretti, Senator Romano will cooperate with any lawful investigation."
Aleandro looked at him.
"Then he should begin by explaining why Detective Holt was staged three blocks from my estate before the first emergency call."
The lawyer stopped speaking.
Dominic's expression changed for less than a heartbeat.
That was enough.
Aleandro walked away.
In the elevator, Marco called.
"We found Carlo."
Aleandro's pulse slowed rather than quickened.
"Where?"
"Security camera at a private airfield in Teterboro caught him forty minutes ago."
"Plane?"
"None departed under his name."
"He won't use his name."
"We know."
Marco paused.
"There's another person in the footage."
"Who?"
"Detective Holt."
Aleandro closed his eyes.
The elevator doors opened to a lobby full of reporters.
He stepped back and let them close again.
"Send the image to Samuel."
"Already did."
"Do not release it."
"Agreed."
"Track both of them."
"We're trying."
"Trying is not a result."
Marco's tone sharpened.
"Neither is threatening everyone who delivers bad news."
Aleandro said nothing.
Marco rarely pushed back.
"We will find them," Marco continued.
"But you need to hear the other thing."
"What other thing?"
"The trust document Samuel received was not leaked from our archive."
"How do you know?"
"Different typeface in the amendment footer."
"And?"
"Samuel compared it with the drafting firm's old system."
Marco exhaled.
"It came from Romano & Pike, the senator's former law firm."
Aleandro leaned against the elevator wall.
"Dominic had the bloodline clause."
"At least a copy of it."
"For how long?"
"Possibly years."
The pieces no longer formed one conspiracy.
They formed a room full of people who each possessed part of the same secret and had used it for different purposes.
Carlo knew Sophia was pregnant.
Dominic knew a biological child could block control of Moretti holdings.
Valentina knew enough about Aleandro's finances to plan an illegal interrogation during her own engagement party.
Detective Holt knew Sophia's name before arriving.
Daniel knew both Carlo and Valentina were moving pieces through the ballroom.
And somewhere between all of them, someone had put a lethal substance into Aleandro's glass.
When Aleandro returned to the Keene house, he found Sophia at the dining table surrounded by copies of old pay stubs, medical records, and letters.
Emma sat on the floor nearby building a palace from wooden blocks.
"What are you doing?"
Sophia did not look up.
"Finding the first lie."
"What does that mean?"
"Everyone is focused on the party."
She held up an envelope yellowed at the edges.
"But this started four years ago."
Aleandro sat across from her.
"What is that?"
"The only piece of mail that reached me after I left Brooklyn."
The envelope was addressed by hand to Sophia's cousin in Philadelphia.
There was no return address.
Inside was a single page.
STAY AWAY FROM NEW YORK UNTIL THE CHILD IS BORN.
AFTER THAT, YOU MAY RETURN IF YOU NEVER CONTACT A. MORETTI.
BREAK THIS RULE AND YOU WILL NOT GET A SECOND WARNING.
Aleandro's expression hardened.
"Why did you keep it?"
"Because fear makes you keep strange things."
"Did police ever see it?"
"I never went to police."
"Why?"
Sophia looked at him.
"Because the man threatening me worked for a family whose photographs included police commissioners."
He accepted the answer.
"Let me see the envelope."
Sophia handed it over.
Aleandro examined the postmark.
"This was mailed from Oyster Bay."
"Does that mean something?"
"My father had a recovery house there."
"Carlo told me your father ordered the threat."
"My father was in that house after his stroke."
Sophia's face tightened.
"So Carlo could have mailed it from there to make the story look true."
"Possibly."
Emma looked up from her blocks.
"Mommy, my palace fell."
Sophia immediately moved to the floor.
"Then we build it again."
Emma frowned at the scattered blocks.
"But I made it tall."
Aleandro watched Sophia patiently sort the blocks by size.
"Tall things fall if the bottom is wrong," she told Emma.
The sentence landed in the room with more meaning than she intended.
Samuel entered ten minutes later.
He carried a cardboard archive box.
"Your father kept personal correspondence outside the corporate records."
Aleandro looked at the box.
"Where did you get that?"
"From the retired secretary who hates Carlo Vieri."
"Everyone should have one useful hobby."
Samuel placed the box on the table.
"She says your father asked her to hide these after his stroke."
Inside were letters, handwritten notes, medical appointment cards, and sealed envelopes.
Sophia worked through them while Aleandro took calls.
At the bottom of the box, she found an envelope with her name on it.
Her hands stopped.
"Aleandro."
He turned.
The envelope was sealed with old Moretti stationery.
The handwriting belonged to his father.
Sophia opened it carefully.
The letter was dated four years earlier, twelve days after she had left New York.
Ms. Bellini,
My son has asked twice whether I know where you went.
I do not.
I am told there may be a child.
If that is true, you and the child are under my protection whether you want that protection or not.
Do not trust anyone who claims I ordered you away.
Carlo has been acting beyond his authority.
Contact only the number below.
Sophia stopped reading.
Aleandro took the page.
The bottom contained a telephone number and one more sentence.
If something happens to me before this reaches you, tell Aleandro the lion does not guard the house anymore.
Aleandro read the final line twice.
"He knew."
Sophia's voice broke.
"Your father knew Carlo threatened me."
"And tried to warn us."
Samuel examined the envelope.
"It was never mailed."
"Why?"
"Maybe the secretary hid it before she could send it."
Aleandro shook his head.
"Or someone stopped it."
His phone rang.
Marco again.
"We located Carlo's plane."
"Where?"
"Still on the ground."
"Then take him."
"He's not there."
"You said you found him."
"We found the plane and Holt."
Aleandro stood.
"Where is Holt?"
"Dead in the back seat of his own car."
Sophia looked up sharply.
Marco continued.
"And Carlo left a message on the windshield."
"What message?"
"One word."
Aleandro waited.
"LIAR."
The unsent letter from Aleandro's father also contained a telephone number that Samuel initially assumed was dead.
Marco checked anyway.
The number had belonged to a prepaid line purchased by a private investigator named Martin Hale, who died two years earlier.
His widow remembered the Moretti name because her husband had once been paid to locate a young pregnant woman without contacting her directly.
The assignment had been canceled before he found Sophia.
The cancellation came from Carlo's office.
That discovery complicated the story again.
Aleandro's father had apparently launched his own search after learning Sophia disappeared, but Carlo intercepted it before the investigator could report back.
Samuel found a final invoice marked TERMINATED BY CLIENT REPRESENTATIVE.
The representative's initials were C.V.
Aleandro stared at the photocopy.
Carlo had not merely frightened Sophia away.
He had actively prevented the Moretti patriarch from bringing her back under protection.
Whatever protective logic Carlo later claimed, he had made sure only he controlled where Sophia was and who knew about the child.
May you like
For Aleandro, that distinction destroyed the last comfortable version of Carlo's intentions.
