# CHAPTER 9 — THE VOICE AFTER THE GUNSHOT
Matteo did not move.
The adviser had spent four decades surviving rooms where one wrong expression could become a death sentence.
Now a four-year-old girl was pointing at him.
“What voice?” Matteo asked.
“The man after the loud sound,” Emma said. “He sounds like you.”
Mara pulled her daughter closer.
“You remember hearing him before?”
Emma nodded.
“At the church.”
Matteo’s eyes narrowed.
Mara looked confused.
“What church?”
“The day Daddy didn’t come home.”
Mara stared at Emma.
Daniel had disappeared after leaving for evening Mass at St. Michael’s Church.
Emma had been two years old.
Mara had assumed she remembered nothing.
“Who took you to the church?” Mara asked.
“Daddy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Emma looked frightened.
“Daddy said it was a secret game.”
Matteo raised both hands.
“I never met Daniel Carter.”
Alejandro turned toward him.
“You approved his employment.”
“I approve hundreds of names.”
“He drove in Kiara’s convoy.”
“And disappeared after the crash. That does not make me his killer.”
Bruno stepped closer.
“Let’s compare the recording.”
Gabriel isolated the second voice and matched it against archived security audio.
The computer processed for several seconds.
MATCH PROBABILITY: 62%.
“Not enough,” Matteo said.
Gabriel adjusted the filters.
“The recording is damaged.”
“Then you have nothing.”
Alejandro watched Matteo carefully.
“Where were you the night Daniel disappeared?”
“At dinner with you.”
Alejandro remembered.
Matteo had left the restaurant for nearly forty minutes after receiving a call.
At the time, he had claimed his wife was ill.
Matteo’s wife had died six months later.
No one could question her now.
Lucia crossed her arms.
“Search his office.”
Matteo looked at her.
“You arrived after receiving a dead child’s voice and immediately accused me. That is convenient.”
“The footage shows a Moretti ring.”
“And yours fits.”
Alejandro struck the desk with his palm.
“Enough.”
The room fell silent.
He ordered Gabriel to search the memory card for additional files.
The old camera had recorded years of activity.
Most clips contained Alejandro working alone.
Then Gabriel found a file dated three years earlier.
The timestamp was the night before Kiara’s crash.
Alejandro sat at his desk arguing with someone outside the camera’s view.
The audio was faint, but clear enough.
“You will not use my daughter to control me,” Alejandro said.
A man answered.
“You stopped controlling what happens to Kiara the moment you refused the succession agreement.”
Alejandro in the present stared at the screen.
He did not remember that conversation.
Gabriel increased the brightness.
The second man stepped into view.
It was Alejandro’s father, Salvatore Moretti.
A man who had supposedly been too ill to leave his hospital bed that week.
On the footage, Salvatore placed a file on the desk.
“If you die without signing this,” he said, “Kiara inherits everything.”
Alejandro pushed the file away.
“My daughter will never inherit this life.”
Salvatore smiled coldly.
“Then perhaps she must disappear before you do.”
The recording ended.
Alejandro looked toward Matteo.
Matteo had served Salvatore for twenty-five years.
“Did my father order Kiara’s death?”
Matteo’s face finally cracked.
“No.”
“Then tell me what he ordered.”
May you like
Matteo glanced toward Emma.
“He ordered us to make the world believe she was dead.”
