Chapter 10 - The Blood Beneath the Swimming Pool
I wanted to drive straight to Manhattan.
I wanted to find Vincent.
I wanted to make my mother answer every question she had refused to answer for thirty-eight years.
But rage would not protect Grace.
It would not save Samuel.
And it would not keep my newborn son breathing.
So I did the hardest thing I had ever done.
I stayed still long enough to think.
"Nico, call the authorities."
He looked at me.
"All of it?"
"Everything."
He hesitated.
The Rossi family had spent generations solving problems without involving law enforcement.
Sometimes that meant paying lawyers.
Sometimes it meant hiding evidence.
And sometimes it meant doing things I had spent the last five years trying to leave behind.
I looked at my father's frozen face on the laptop screen.
"Tell them about the prison."
Nico nodded.
"The hospital records?"
"All of them."
"And the family trust?"
"Everything relevant."
Nico studied me.
"You understand what this means."
"Yes."
"Some of our own people could be arrested."
I looked at him.
"If they're involved, they should be."
He nodded once.
"I'll make the calls."
The state investigators who arrived did not treat me like a grieving husband.
They treated me like the head of a family with a long and violent history.
That was fair.
Detective Laura Bennett introduced herself just after three in the morning.
She was in her early forties, with tired eyes and a direct way of speaking.
"Mr. Rossi, I need you to understand that cooperating doesn't automatically protect you from investigation."
"I understand."
"Your wife was held prisoner inside your estate."
"I know."
"You had no knowledge of it?"
"No."
She studied me.
"That's difficult to believe."
I looked at her.
"Then investigate me."
Something changed in her expression.
"Are you willing to turn over security recordings and internal correspondence?"
"Yes."
"Financial documents?"
"Where relevant."
"Access to the property?"
"Immediately."
She closed her notebook.
"Then we have somewhere to start."
By dawn, investigators had secured the west wing.
My mother's private rooms were searched.
Two estate guards had been detained.
Peter Walsh had been transported to a hospital under protection.
Vincent remained missing.
The gunshot we'd heard over the phone had not yet been explained.
And my mother had disappeared into a network of people who had been loyal to her long before I became head of the family.
I drove to the estate with Detective Bennett and a forensic team.
Samuel stayed at the hospital under Nico's protection.
Grace remained in recovery.
Our son was stable but still needed oxygen support.
The old pool house stood beyond the main gardens.
Its windows were boarded.
Vines covered the stone walls.
I hadn't entered it in more than twenty years.
Bennett walked beside me.
"What are we looking for?"
"My father mentioned this building in a recording."
"Why?"
"He said he hid something here."
We forced open the side entrance.
The smell of damp wood and stagnant water filled the room.
Dust covered the tiled floor.
The swimming pool itself had been drained.
A shallow layer of rainwater collected in its deepest section.
I remembered being ten years old.
My father had stood at the edge, holding out his hands.
Jump, Dante.
I'd been terrified.
I won't let you sink.
Back then, I believed him.
I crossed the cracked tiles and approached the diving board.
"Here."
Bennett looked at me.
"What?"
"My father kept a maintenance compartment beneath this platform."
We found the narrow panel after clearing away debris.
Inside was a locked metal box.
The brass key from the video was visible in my father's hand, but I didn't have it.
One of Bennett's technicians opened the box under evidence-handling procedures.
Inside were financial records.
Photographs.
A second storage drive.
And a sealed envelope addressed to me.
Bennett allowed me to read the letter after photographing it.
My father's handwriting was unmistakable.
Dante,
If you are standing here, then Elena has crossed a line I prayed she would never cross.
You must understand that her fear is not losing money.
Her fear is that the truth about our family will finally destroy the name she spent her life protecting.
There is one person who knows what happened to my first wife.
I froze.
My first wife?
I had always believed Elena was my father's only wife.
I turned the page.
The next sentence changed everything.
Her name was Isabella.
And she did not die in the accident Elena described.
I looked at Bennett.
"What is it?"
My voice sounded distant.
"My father had another wife."
She waited.
I continued reading.
If Elena discovers that Isabella's daughter is alive, she will stop at nothing to erase her.
My hand began trembling.
My father had another child.
Not only Samuel.
A daughter.
Someone I had never heard of.
At the bottom of the letter was a name.
Lydia Morgan.
I stared at it.
Samuel's mother.
Then I understood.
Lydia hadn't simply been my father's lover.
She had been carrying a secret connected to a woman Elena had spent decades trying to erase.
Bennett leaned closer.
"What's wrong?"
I looked at the old letter.
Then at the evidence box.
"Lydia knows where my father's first daughter is."
Before I could say more, Bennett's radio crackled.
A search officer had found a sealed room beneath the pumping station.
Inside was a woman's bloodstained coat.
A broken phone.
And a handwritten note.
May you like
The message was only one sentence.
Elena didn't kill me because she still needs the girl.
