Chapter 6
Rosalie remembered the old records.
Not because she had seen them.
Because Damien had once asked her about them.
The estate had undergone a security-system replacement two years earlier. Old drives and backup equipment had been moved into a locked basement storage room.
Rosalie had helped catalog furniture and household items during the renovation.
“Damien asked who had the key,” she said.
“When?”
“About four months ago.”
“Why didn’t you think it was strange?”
“He was always here.”
That answer irritated Alessandro because it was true.
Damien had become so familiar that nobody questioned him.
Daniel opened the basement room.
Dust covered most of the shelves.
Old network equipment sat beside boxed silverware, lamps, and unused furniture.
One cabinet had been forced.
The damage was subtle.
A broken latch replaced with a newer screw.
Inside were empty spaces where several hard drives should have been.
Daniel checked the old inventory.
Four drives were missing.
“What years?”
The technician ran his finger down the list.
“Four years ago.”
Alessandro froze.
Four years earlier was when his wife, Elena, died.
He had not expected her name to enter the story.
Not yet.
Elena Rizzano had died in a highway crash on a freezing February night.
Her SUV struck a barrier outside Chicago after losing control on black ice.
Livia had been eleven months old.
Alessandro remembered the hospital corridor.
The fluorescent lights.
The doctor walking toward him.
The strange moment when the entire world continued moving even after his own stopped.
Damien had been there that night.
He had sat beside Alessandro until morning.
Bianca had not yet been part of Alessandro’s life.
“What would estate cameras have to do with Elena’s accident?” Daniel asked.
Alessandro did not answer.
The crash occurred twenty miles away.
Yet Damien had wanted records from the same year erased.
Michael arrived an hour later with another discovery.
Some of the wedding money had gone to a private storage company in Indiana.
The account had been paid by Moretti Event Coordination.
“Who rented the unit?”
“Damien.”
“What’s inside?”
“No idea.”
Alessandro looked toward Daniel.
“Don’t touch it.”
Daniel seemed surprised.
Four years earlier Alessandro would have sent men there immediately.
Now he understood evidence became weaker every time anger touched it.
“Give everything to Evelyn.”
That evening, Livia sat on the bathroom counter while Margaret carefully trimmed the worst uneven pieces of her hair.
Alessandro watched from the doorway.
Livia looked at him in the mirror.
“Am I ugly?”
“No.”
“Bianca said—”
“Bianca was wrong.”
Livia studied herself.
“Mommy had long hair.”
Alessandro’s throat tightened.
“Yes.”
Livia smiled faintly.
“Mine will grow.”
After she went to bed, Alessandro returned downstairs.
On his desk was an old photograph Rosalie had found while clearing wedding decorations.
Elena.
Alessandro.
Damien.
All three standing together at a charity dinner five years earlier.
Damien had his hand on Alessandro’s shoulder.
May you like
Alessandro stared at the photograph for a long time.
The man investigating his wife’s old security records had once comforted him at her funeral.
