Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN IN THE RED DRESS
By the time we returned to the mansion, dawn had begun turning the eastern sky gray.
The engagement decorations were still hanging.
White flowers lined the staircase.
Gold candles had burned down into pools of wax.
Half-empty champagne glasses remained on tables where guests had abandoned them during the blackout.
It looked less like the morning after a celebration and more like a ballroom evacuated before a storm.
Adrian Moretti stood in the center of it.
He was sixty-eight, silver-haired, tanned, and dressed in a cream suit that looked absurdly calm for five in the morning.
Vanessa stood beside him in the same red dress she'd worn at dinner.
She had changed nothing except her expression.
The smile was gone.
"Luca," Adrian said warmly. "You look terrible."
Luca stopped ten feet away.
"You flew from Florida in the middle of the night?"
"Vanessa called me upset. She said there had been some misunderstanding."
Dominic entered behind us.
Adrian's face lost all color.
That reaction lasted less than a second.
Then he recovered.
"Well," he said softly. "The dead are getting ambitious."
Dominic smiled without humor.
"Miss me?"
Vanessa turned toward Luca.
"This is exactly what I was trying to prevent."
"By stealing my father's watch?"
"By keeping this lunatic from dragging you into something Salvatore should have buried with him."
I stood beside Daniel near the foyer archway.
Every muscle in my body ached from exhaustion.
My wrist throbbed.
But I wasn't leaving.
Vanessa noticed me.
Her expression sharpened.
"And she is still here."
Luca didn't look at me.
"Hannah stays."
"She's staff."
"She's involved."
"Because she made herself involved."
I almost spoke.
Luca beat me to it.
"She became involved when your investigator bruised her wrist while stealing from my house."
Vanessa turned toward Adrian.
"You see what he's doing? He has decided a housekeeper is more credible than his fiancée."
Adrian's eyes moved to me.
They were polite.
That made them worse.
"Miss Parker," he said. "I'm sorry you've been caught in a family disagreement."
I heard my mother's voice in my head.
The man named Adrian Moretti is not the leader. He is the bridge.
"My family was already in this disagreement," I said.
His expression changed.
Barely.
"Was it?"
"You knew my parents."
Vanessa looked at him.
That surprised her.
Good.
Adrian sighed.
"Nathan Parker worked for one of our companies. Thousands of people did."
"My mother knew about the ledger."
This time the surprise was harder to hide.
Luca saw it.
"You told me Evelyn Parker was a rumor," he said.
Adrian looked at Dominic.
"I told you many things after your father died. Most of them were intended to keep you alive."
"Did you kill Nathan Parker?"
The question hit the room like a gunshot.
I stopped breathing.
Adrian looked at me.
Then back at Luca.
"No."
I believed he had practiced saying that answer for years.
Dominic walked closer.
"Did Vittorio Bellini?"
Adrian's jaw tightened.
"Vittorio was a violent idiot."
"That's not an answer."
"No," Adrian said. "It isn't."
Vanessa stepped forward.
"This is insane. My father is dead. You're accusing him because he cannot defend himself."
Dominic looked at her.
"Your father tried to kill me twice. I don't need him alive to remember it."
Vanessa's eyes flashed.
Then she did something I didn't expect.
She began to cry.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Her shoulders softened. Her mouth trembled.
She turned to Luca.
"I was trying to protect you."
Luca did not move.
"From what?"
"From Dominic. From old accusations. From men who want to use your father's mistakes to destroy everything you've built."
"So you hired Elias Vane."
"Yes."
The admission surprised everyone.
"I found a letter among my father's things after he died," she continued. "It mentioned Dominic and the watch. I thought if Dominic was alive, he might have something that could hurt you. I wanted to find him before anyone else did."
Luca's gaze hardened.
"Why steal the watch?"
"Because Elias told me Dominic wanted it. I thought I could trade it for whatever evidence he had."
"Why tell Elias to keep me from finding out Dominic was alive?"
Her face crumpled beautifully.
"Because I knew what you'd do. This. You would go chasing your father through old graves. You'd stop sleeping. You'd trust people you shouldn't."
She looked toward me.
"People who suddenly appear with convenient stories."
The attack was elegant.
Not I am innocent.
She is suspicious too.
Adrian stepped between them.
"Luca, whatever Vanessa did, we can handle it privately. Your wedding is tomorrow. There are reporters already calling."
Luca laughed once.
"You think the wedding is still happening?"
Vanessa went pale.
"Luca."
"Take off the ring."
She stared at him.
"Don't do this because you're angry."
"I'm not angry."
That was true.
He sounded much worse than angry.
"Take it off."
Vanessa's hand closed around the diamond.
For a second, I thought she might refuse.
Then she pulled the ring free.
She set it on the console table.
The tiny click seemed impossibly loud.
"You will regret humiliating me in front of your staff," she said.
Luca's eyes never left hers.
"My staff watched you lie about how one of them was injured. Your definition of humiliation needs work."
Vanessa's gaze found me again.
I saw something there I had not seen before.
Fear.
Not of Luca.
Of me.
That frightened me.
Adrian cleared his throat.
"Before we turn this into a family war, perhaps someone should explain why Dominic decided to resurrect himself tonight."
Dominic placed the copied ledger index on the table.
"Because Evelyn Parker kept better records than all of you."
Adrian looked down.
He did not touch the pages.
"Where did you get that?"
"Union Station."
A shadow crossed his face.
Luca noticed.
"You knew about box 214."
"No."
"You recognized it."
"I recognized Evelyn's handwriting."
I stepped closer.
"You said you barely knew my parents."
Adrian looked at me.
For the first time, the polished uncle disappeared.
"Your mother was a nuisance," he said quietly. "An intelligent, stubborn nuisance who never understood when survival required silence."
The room went still.
Vanessa turned toward him.
"Adrian."
He realized what he'd said.
Too late.
Luca's voice dropped.
"You knew her well enough to hate her."
Adrian recovered quickly.
"I knew of her. Salvatore complained."
Dominic shook his head.
"Salvatore trusted her."
"Salvatore trusted strays. It was his worst habit."
Luca moved before I understood he was angry.
He crossed the room and stood inches from his uncle.
"She was a woman with a child."
Adrian met his eyes.
"And your father was a man with an empire. He nearly lost it because he couldn't distinguish morality from weakness."
Something passed between them.
Old resentment.
Old blood.
Then Daniel's phone rang.
He answered, listened, and looked at me.
"Hannah."
My stomach tightened.
"What?"
"Your father is at Mercy Hospital."
The room disappeared.
"What happened?"
"He collapsed at home. A neighbor called an ambulance."
I grabbed the edge of a chair.
"Is he alive?"
"Yes. They're treating him."
I turned toward the door.
Luca followed immediately.
"I'll take you."
"No. Stay here."
"Hannah—"
"This is my father."
"Exactly."
I stared at him.
He lowered his voice.
"If someone found Dominic's farmhouse and planted a bomb under my car, I'm not sending you anywhere alone."
Adrian watched us.
Vanessa watched us too.
Her expression had gone completely still.
Daniel arranged a car.
As I reached the foyer, Vanessa spoke behind me.
"Hannah."
I turned.
She had picked up her engagement ring.
She rolled it between her fingers.
"Ask your father why your mother stopped using the name Evelyn Parker before she died."
I froze.
"What are you talking about?"
Vanessa gave me a small, terrible smile.
"She wasn't always Evelyn Parker."
Luca stepped toward her.
"Enough."
But Vanessa kept looking at me.
"Ask him who she was before she married Nathan."
Then she placed the diamond ring in her purse.
May you like
"And ask him why the Bellini family already knew her."
At the hospital parking garage, before we went upstairs, Luca received confirmation that the catering-jacketed man was not a caterer at all. His name was Peter Sloan, a former private security contractor whose last known employer had been a subsidiary of Bellini Development. He had entered the mansion using credentials approved from Martin Bellini's law office. That detail destroyed the last possibility that the trust documents were simply a mistake. Luca forwarded the information to his new attorneys and then did something I did not expect. He called every member of his board personally. He told them there would be no wedding, that Martin Bellini no longer represented the company, and that any document signed through Bellini's office should be treated as compromised until reviewed. He did not hide the embarrassment. He did not invent a story. He simply cut the infected part away in public. Watching him do it, I understood what Salvatore had meant in the recording we had not yet found: strength was deciding what you refused to become. Luca was already making that choice before he heard his father's words.
