Chapter 8 - The Dead Woman's Signature
Twenty-two years.
That was how long Dante's mother had been dead.
Twenty-two years since a car accident outside Philadelphia had taken the life of Rose Moretti.
At least, that was what Dante believed.
And now my missing brother had left her name inside a secret room beneath the restaurant where his wife's lover had planned to murder him.
I stood in the tunnel holding Daniel's old letter, trying to make sense of it.
"Why would someone use your mother's name?"
Dante remained silent on the phone.
Then he said, "Because she controlled the trust before she died."
My stomach tightened.
"The same trust my mother worked for?"
"Yes."
I looked toward Detective Shaw.
She was speaking with the forensic team.
"And the twenty-seven million?"
Dante exhaled.
"It disappeared shortly before my mother's death."
The tunnel suddenly felt too narrow.
I thought of the accident.
Dante's sabotaged brakes.
His car disappearing over a cliff.
The way Vanessa had expected to be a widow before midnight.
A horrible possibility formed in my mind.
"How did your mother die?"
Dante didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, "Her car went off a mountain road."
My breath caught.
"Was it raining?"
"Yes."
"Did anyone investigate the brakes?"
Silence.
Then Dante asked a question that made my hands turn cold.
"Cara, where are you standing?"
"In the tunnel."
"Go upstairs."
"Why?"
"Because if Daniel is right, somebody used that place to organize two murders separated by twenty-two years."
Dante had never spoken much about his mother.
Not publicly.
Not privately, according to Marco.
In newspaper profiles, Rose Moretti was usually reduced to one sentence.
The late wife of Vittorio Moretti and mother of Dante Moretti.
But the woman in the photographs looked nothing like the fragile figure I had imagined.
She was elegant.
Sharp-eyed.
Confident.
In one picture, she stood beside Vittorio at a charity event, wearing a dark blue gown and a silver falcon brooch.
In another, she sat behind a desk covered in paperwork.
A young Dante stood beside her, grinning.
He couldn't have been older than sixteen.
I stared at that photograph for a long time.
For the first time, I saw the boy he'd once been.
Before the power.
Before the reputation.
Before he learned to hide every emotion behind those gray eyes.
And I wondered what losing his mother had done to him.
That afternoon, Detective Shaw arranged a meeting with a retired state investigator named Arthur Bennett.
He had worked on Rose Moretti's fatal crash.
He was seventy-three now.
His hair was white.
His hands trembled slightly when he lifted his coffee.
But his eyes were clear.
We met in a small conference room with Dante, Elena, Shaw, and Marco present.
Bennett looked at Dante.
"You look like your father."
Dante didn't smile.
"I've been told."
Bennett sighed.
"I hoped I'd never hear about that road again."
Shaw opened a file.
"Mr. Bennett, we're reviewing circumstances that may connect Mrs. Moretti's death to a recent attempted murder."
Bennett looked toward me.
"Who's she?"
"Cara Fields."
His cup stopped halfway to his mouth.
"Fields?"
I nodded.
"Yes."
He placed the cup down slowly.
"Your mother was Evelyn?"
My heart jumped.
"You knew her?"
Bennett closed his eyes.
"Of course I knew her."
I leaned forward.
"How?"
"She came to me after Rose died."
Dante went completely still.
"What did she tell you?"
Bennett looked at him.
"That your mother's crash wasn't an accident."
The room fell silent.
I felt goose bumps rise along my arms.
Bennett continued.
"Evelyn believed someone had tampered with Rose's vehicle."
Dante's jaw tightened.
"Why wasn't that in the official report?"
"Because I couldn't prove it."
"Did you inspect the car?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"The damage was severe."
"That isn't an answer."
Bennett's expression hardened.
"Your father had powerful lawyers, Mr. Moretti."
"People were calling my office before the wreckage had even been recovered."
Dante stared at him.
"Are you saying my father interfered?"
"I'm saying I was pressured to close the case quickly."
I looked toward Dante.
He seemed genuinely shaken.
Bennett continued.
"Your mother had been asking questions about the trust."
"She believed money was disappearing."
"Evelyn Fields was helping her."
My hands went cold.
"So my mother knew?"
Bennett nodded.
"More than anyone wanted her to know."
I looked down at my fingers.
My mother had never told me any of this.
She had raised two children alone.
Worked long hours.
Fought cancer.
And carried a secret powerful enough to destroy people.
"Why didn't she go public?"
Bennett looked at me with something close to pity.
"Because two days after she contacted me, someone threatened her children."
I stopped breathing.
Daniel and me.
We'd been five and eight.
I looked at Dante.
His face had gone pale.
Bennett continued.
"Evelyn came to my office with a photograph."
"Someone had taken it through her kitchen window."
I pressed a hand over my mouth.
"Of us?"
Bennett nodded.
"She was terrified."
"She told me she couldn't risk losing her babies."
Tears blurred my vision.
For years, I'd thought my mother had been afraid of ordinary things.
Bills.
Illness.
Being alone.
Now I understood that she'd once been afraid of men who could find her children through a kitchen window.
After the meeting, Dante found me sitting outside on a stone bench.
The afternoon air was cool.
Traffic moved beyond the hospital gates.
I stared at my hands.
He approached slowly.
"Can I sit?"
I nodded.
He lowered himself beside me with a slight wince.
"You shouldn't be walking around."
"Apparently, neither should you."
I almost smiled.
Then the feeling disappeared.
"Your mother died because she found missing money."
Dante looked toward the street.
"Maybe."
"My mother helped her."
"Yes."
"And Daniel found the same thing twenty-two years later."
He nodded.
I turned toward him.
"Do you see what that means?"
Dante's expression darkened.
"The person behind it may still be alive."
"Not just alive."
I swallowed.
"Still powerful enough to make people disappear."
He looked at me.
I could see the calculation moving behind his eyes.
The names.
The relationships.
The risks.
Then he said, "I'm going to find whoever did this."
My chest tightened.
"And what happens when you do?"
He didn't answer.
I looked at him.
"Dante."
His jaw flexed.
"You know what people expect me to say."
"Yes."
"They expect revenge."
I waited.
His gray eyes met mine.
"But I want the truth."
I studied his face.
"Even if the truth destroys your family?"
His expression changed.
Then he answered.
"Especially then."
At seven that evening, Elena brought us a copy of a document recovered from archived trust records.
It was a transfer authorization dated three days before Rose's death.
The document approved a movement of twenty-seven million dollars into several outside accounts.
The signature at the bottom belonged to Rose Moretti.
At least, it appeared to.
Elena placed a second document beside it.
A verified signature from an earlier filing.
The handwriting was similar.
But not identical.
"There are inconsistencies."
Dante leaned closer.
"Forgery?"
"Possibly."
Elena pointed to the first line.
"Look at the date."
I did.
October 19.
Twenty-two years earlier.
Dante frowned.
"What about it?"
Elena opened another folder.
"According to the medical records, Rose Moretti had been hospitalized after a minor surgical procedure."
"She wasn't discharged until October 20."
I looked at the authorization.
The signature had been witnessed at a downtown office.
While Rose was supposedly recovering in a hospital.
I stared at Elena.
"So she couldn't have signed it?"
"Not at the stated location and time, assuming both sets of records are accurate."
Dante's face hardened.
"Who witnessed the signature?"
Elena turned the page.
I leaned forward.
There were two names.
The first belonged to a notary who had died years ago.
The second made my breath stop.
ADRIAN BELL.
Dante stared at the name.
"Adrian would have been a teenager."
Elena nodded.
"Seventeen."
"Was he even employed by the company?"
"No."
I frowned.
"Then why is his signature there?"
Nobody answered.
Elena opened one final page.
"There's another problem."
She pointed to a small seal at the bottom.
The silver falcon.
Beneath it was a handwritten approval.
I recognized the name instantly.
VITTORIO MORETTI.
Dante's father.
The man who had supposedly spent twenty-two years mourning the wife he'd lost in a car accident.
I looked at Dante.
His eyes had gone completely empty.
Then his phone rang.
The screen displayed a number with no caller ID.
Dante answered.
For several seconds, he listened in silence.
Then a familiar male voice came through the speaker.
It was deep.
Calm.
And unmistakably amused.
"My son."
Dante gripped the phone.
"Father?"
I stared at him.
Vittorio Moretti had been declared dead five years earlier.
May you like
But the voice continued.
"You should have stayed at the bottom of that cliff."
