Chapter 8 - Valentina's Lie
By noon, every major news outlet in New York had a version of Sophia's face on its homepage.
Some used the photograph taken while she was being led from the estate in handcuffs.
Others found an old employee identification photo from the staffing agency.
One headline called her the JEALOUS MAID.
Another called the poisoned toast a LOVE TRIANGLE AT THE MORETTI ESTATE.
A television commentator who had never met Sophia spent twelve minutes explaining how resentment could build in domestic employees who lived close to wealth they could never possess.
Sophia watched thirty seconds before Aleandro took the remote and turned off the television.
"I was watching that."
"Why?"
"Because they're talking about me."
"They don't know you."
"That has never stopped anyone."
Samuel entered the room carrying three phones.
"It gets worse."
Sophia gave him a tired look.
"I'm beginning to hate that sentence."
"Valentina gave a formal statement from the hospital."
Aleandro stood.
"Without counsel?"
"Her father's counsel was present."
Samuel handed him a transcript.
Valentina claimed Sophia approached the head table moments before the toast, handed her the engraved glass, and whispered, "Enjoy what belongs to you."
Sophia laughed once in disbelief.
"She actually said that?"
"Under oath to detectives."
"There are cameras."
Samuel nodded.
"Which is why the statement is either desperate or calculated."
Aleandro read the page again.
"Where is the ballroom footage now?"
Marco answered from the doorway.
"Original server is secured."
"Copies?"
"Three encrypted drives."
"Police?"
"Holt took one."
Aleandro looked up.
"Holt."
Marco understood.
"I'll verify chain of custody."
Twenty minutes later, he returned with a face like stone.
"The copy delivered to Holt is missing nineteen seconds."
Sophia stared at him.
"Which nineteen seconds?"
"The exact section showing Valentina taking the glass from Luca's tray."
Samuel swore.
"Can they claim the original was corrupted?"
"They can claim anything until we produce ours."
Aleandro turned to Sophia.
"We release the footage."
She shook her head.
"Not yet."
Everyone looked at her.
"Why?"
"Because whoever altered the police copy thinks we don't know."
Sophia's fear had sharpened into something more useful.
"If we release ours now, they'll change their next move."
Samuel smiled faintly.
"I like her."
Aleandro ignored him.
"You want them to keep lying."
"I want to know how many lies they prepared before the party."
Marco nodded.
"We can feed Holt a checksum report showing a corrupted export without mentioning our other copies."
"Do it."
Sophia looked toward the staircase.
"And the DNA test?"
Samuel checked his watch.
"Courier from the first lab should be here within the hour."
The samples had been taken that morning under chain-of-custody procedures Samuel personally supervised.
Emma thought the cheek swab was a game and had demanded that Mr. Hops be tested too.
Aleandro had agreed until the technician explained that stuffed rabbits did not qualify as legal relatives.
For the first time since the poisoning, Emma had laughed without fear.
At one seventeen, the sealed results arrived.
Samuel opened them in front of Sophia and Aleandro.
He read silently.
Then he handed the page to Sophia.
Probability of paternity: 99.9998 percent.
She looked at the number and felt nothing surprising.
It merely gave scientific language to something she had known every day of Emma's life.
Aleandro took the page next.
He read the result once.
Then again.
His face remained controlled, but Sophia saw his thumb tremble against the paper.
"You knew," she said quietly.
"I believed."
"That's different."
"Yes."
He looked toward the ceiling, toward the room where Emma was coloring with Samuel's housekeeper.
"Now I know."
A notification sounded on Marco's phone.
His expression changed.
"Someone just tried to access Emma's pediatric records."
Sophia stood.
"Who?"
"Request came through a law firm connected to the Romano family."
Aleandro's eyes hardened.
"Why would Dominic want her medical records?"
Samuel took the phone.
"Maybe he doesn't."
He scrolled through the request.
"This isn't about health."
"What is it about?"
"They requested newborn blood-type documentation."
Sophia felt cold.
"They want to prove paternity."
"Or disprove it."
Aleandro folded the DNA report and slipped it into his inner pocket.
"Nobody outside this room learns the result."
Samuel nodded.
"Agreed."
"Especially Valentina."
The front bell rang.
Every guard in the house reacted.
Marco checked the gate camera.
A courier stood outside holding a florist box.
"No deliveries were approved."
"Turn him away."
The courier placed the box on the ground and walked back toward his van without arguing.
That was wrong.
Marco was already moving when the guard at the gate shouted through the radio.
"Do not touch the package."
The bomb team found no explosive.
Inside the florist box were twelve white roses and a child's pink shoe.
Sophia recognized it immediately.
It was Emma's missing shoe from the ballroom.
Beneath it lay a note.
Aleandro read the single sentence aloud.
"A blood test will not save what blood created."
Sophia sat down slowly.
Samuel looked at Aleandro.
"They know we're testing."
"Which means someone inside this house is still reporting to them."
The room went silent.
There were only eight adults on the property.
Six had worked with Samuel's family for years.
One was Marco.
One was Samuel.
Aleandro looked at every face through the open doorway.
Then Emma appeared at the top of the stairs holding a sheet of paper.
"Mommy, I drew the lion man."
Sophia forced herself to smile.
"Come show me."
Emma walked down carefully and handed her the picture.
The drawing was what anyone would expect from a three-year-old: a large round head, two stick arms, a black suit, and one oversized yellow hand covered by a scribbled circle.
But there was another detail.
Around the man's neck, Emma had drawn a bright red line with a small black square at the center.
Aleandro crouched beside her.
"What's that?"
"His necklace."
Marco leaned closer.
Carlo Vieri never wore a necklace.
But one man in the Moretti security detail always wore a red medical-alert cord beneath his shirt because of a severe penicillin allergy.
Marco stood so fast the chair behind him tipped over.
"Where is Daniel Kessler?"
No one answered.
The guard assigned to the east perimeter was gone.
The second DNA laboratory insisted on a fresh sample collected under separate supervision, which Sophia welcomed despite the inconvenience.
She wanted no future accusation that Aleandro's money had touched the process.
Emma became bored halfway through the paperwork and asked the technician whether fathers could be tested by hair like lost dogs in cartoons.
The technician laughed and said cheeks worked better.
Aleandro sat beside Emma while the swab was taken and realized she watched his face for cues about whether she should be afraid.
He relaxed his jaw deliberately.
Emma copied him.
Sophia noticed the mirrored expression and looked away before either of them saw her reaction.
Later, when the threatening florist box arrived, that harmless laboratory moment became suddenly terrifying.
Someone outside the room knew enough to understand the test mattered.
The leak could not have come from the laboratory because the courier request had been arranged under sealed identities.
That meant the information came from someone observing movement around Samuel's house or listening to one of their communications.
The threat was not merely inside the Moretti organization.
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It was adapting in real time.
