Chapter 4 - THE DEATH THEY CALLED AN ACCIDENTValerio did not defend his family.
That surprised Alessia.
He simply asked:
“Which year?”
“2014.”
“Where?”
“Montauk.”
“Name?”
“You know my father’s name.”
“I want to hear it.”
She stared at him.
“Antonio Romano.”
Valerio pulled out his phone.
Called Enzo.
“Pull everything we have from 2014 involving Antonio Romano.”
He ended the call.
Alessia watched him.
“You’re not denying it.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You were twenty-seven.”
“I was in Sicily for six months.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
She looked away.
He did not touch her.
Did not ask her to trust him.
That mattered.
Thirty minutes later, Enzo called back.
“There’s a file.”
Valerio put him on speaker.
“What kind?”
“Old security archive.”
“From whose office?”
“Your father’s.”
Alessia stared.
Valerio’s father, Don Matteo Moretti, had died three years earlier.
“What does it say?”
Enzo hesitated.
“Antonio Romano was under surveillance.”
“Why?”
“Suspicion he was stealing from a joint shipping operation.”
Alessia’s face hardened.
“My father didn’t steal.”
Valerio looked at her.
“Keep going.”
Enzo continued.
“Two days before his death, Antonio requested a private meeting with Matteo.”
“Did it happen?”
“Yes.”
“Record?”
“Audio only.”
“Send it.”
The file arrived.
Valerio opened it.
Antonio’s voice filled the room.
“You have a leak.”
Matteo Moretti answered:
“In my organization?”
“In both.”
Paper moved.
Antonio continued.
“Someone is using Romano and Moretti ports to move money without our knowledge.”
“Who?”
“I have partial signatures.”
“Show me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because one belongs to someone in my family.”
Silence.
Then Matteo:
“And the other?”
Antonio’s voice lowered.
“Someone in yours.”
Alessia stared at Valerio.
The recording continued.
Matteo said:
“We investigate quietly.”
Antonio:
“I already did.”
“What did you find?”
“I found enough to know they’ll kill me if they learn I know.”
Then the file ended.
Alessia’s hands shook.
“My father knew.”
“Yes.”
“And your father knew.”
“Yes.”
“Then two days later my father died.”
Valerio said nothing.
She hated that.
“Say something.”
“What do you want?”
“Tell me your father didn’t order it.”
“I can’t.”
Pain crossed her face.
He continued:
“But I can find out.”
The official report said Antonio Romano’s speedboat struck submerged debris.
Fuel leak.
Fire.
Body recovered the next morning.
Cause of death: drowning and trauma.
Alessia had been sixteen.
She remembered her mother screaming.
Her uncle Salvatore taking over the family business.
Lucia moving into their home for three months.
Veronica telling Alessia she needed to stop crying because “men like Uncle Salvatore hate weakness.”
Everything after her father’s death had rearranged her life.
Now she wondered if it had been arranged.
Valerio found another file.
Payment.
Three days after Antonio’s death.
Two hundred thousand dollars to a marine mechanic named Joseph Bell.
Signed by a Moretti company controller.
Enzo traced Bell.
Alive.
Living in New Jersey.
They reached him before sunset.
Joseph Bell opened the door, saw Valerio, and immediately tried to shut it.
Valerio caught the frame.
“We need to talk.”
“I don’t.”
Alessia stood behind him on crutches.
Bell saw her.
His face drained.
“You’re Antonio’s girl.”
Alessia’s stomach dropped.
“You knew my father?”
Bell looked away.
“Leave.”
“Did you sabotage his boat?”
“No.”
“Then why were you paid?”
Silence.
Valerio said:
“Two hundred thousand.”
Bell’s eyes flickered.
“Insurance consulting.”
“Try again.”
Bell shook.
“I didn’t know he would die.”
Alessia went cold.
“What did you do?”
Bell backed away.
“Nothing.”
She stepped forward despite the pain.
“What did you do?”
“I changed the fuel line.”
Her breath stopped.
“Who told you?”
Bell looked at Valerio.
Not Alessia.
Valerio saw it.
“Who?”
Bell whispered:
“Your father.”
The room went silent.
Alessia stared at Valerio.
His face became stone.
“Matteo ordered it?”
Bell shook his head quickly.
“No.”
“But you just said—”
“Not Don Matteo.”
Valerio’s eyes sharpened.
“Then who?”
Bell looked terrified.
“Your brother.”
Valerio froze.
Alessia frowned.
“I thought you were an only child.”
Valerio did not answer.
Because officially, he was.
Bell whispered the name.
“Lorenzo Moretti.”
Valerio stepped backward.
For the first time, Alessia saw genuine shock break through his control.
“Lorenzo is dead.”
Bell shook his head.
“No.”
“He died in 2011.”
“No.”
“I saw the body.”
“No, you saw a closed casket.”
Valerio’s eyes darkened.
Bell continued.
“Lorenzo was alive in 2014.”
Alessia gripped the crutches.
“You’re saying Valerio’s dead brother ordered my father’s murder?”
Bell nodded.
“And he wasn’t acting alone.”
“Who else?”
Bell looked at Alessia.
Then whispered:
“Lucia Romano.”
The entire case turned upside down.
Lucia had called to warn Alessia away from Salvatore.
Not because Salvatore was innocent.
But because Lucia was involved.
Valerio’s supposedly dead older brother, Lorenzo, had been connected to Antonio’s sabotaged boat.
Aunt Lucia had ordered Camille kept alive.
Forty-eight million had disappeared through family trusts.
And the wedding attack suddenly looked less like an isolated effort to stop a bank meeting.
It looked like the newest move in a conspiracy that had been operating for more than a decade.
That night, Alessia sat in Valerio’s townhouse with her injured leg elevated.
“You saw Lorenzo’s funeral?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“What happened?”
“Car explosion.”
“Body?”
“Closed casket.”
“Dental confirmation?”
Valerio looked at her.
“No.”
“DNA?”
“No.”
“Then you never confirmed him.”
“My father did.”
“Your father also knew my father feared someone inside your family.”
Valerio’s face tightened.
She regretted the cruelty immediately.
But not the truth.
“Sorry.”
“No.”
He looked toward the window.
“You’re right.”
Another silence.
Then:
“If Lorenzo is alive, he has been hiding for fifteen years.”
“Why?”
“Because he tried to overthrow my father.”
Alessia looked at him.
“What?”
Valerio sat opposite her.
“Lorenzo wanted control. My father refused. There was violence.”
“How much violence?”
“Enough that Lorenzo disappeared and was declared dead after the explosion.”
“Convenient again.”
“Yes.”
“Did you believe he died?”
“For years.”
“And now?”
Valerio looked at the financial records.
“Now I think he learned that dead men are difficult to investigate.”
Alessia remembered her own words from earlier.
Dead men don’t answer subpoenas.
Apparently dead men also moved millions.
Her phone buzzed.
A photograph.
Sent from an unknown number.
It showed a man stepping onto a private yacht in Malta.
Older.
Gray at the temples.
But unmistakably related to Valerio.
The jaw.
The eyes.
The posture.
Lorenzo Moretti.
Alive.
Beneath the image was one sentence:
COME TO MALTA IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY YOUR FATHER HAD TO DIE.
Alessia stared at it.
Valerio read over her shoulder.
Then said:
“You’re not going.”
She looked at him.
“You already know how this conversation ends.”
“Yes.”
May you like
He sighed.
“Unfortunately.”
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