Chapter 3 - The Man Who Knew My Father
Vittorio moved in front of me before the stranger finished speaking.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Marco reached beneath his jacket.
“Show yourself.”
The footsteps stopped.
Then a man stepped into view.
Silver hair.
Dark suit.
Scar beside his left ear.
Preston whispered, “That’s him.”
Luca Bellini.
The man connected to my father’s death stood inside Vittorio’s supposedly secure mansion.
Yet Luca smiled as though he had been invited.
He claimed he had come to return something Gabriel had left behind.
Vittorio demanded to know how he entered.
Luca answered with a key.
Not a copied key.
An original Serrano key that should have been destroyed decades earlier.
Sofia recognized it.
Gabriel’s.
Luca had kept it since the night Gabriel died.
He claimed Gabriel’s death had not been an accident.
Gabriel had discovered that someone inside the Serrano business was laundering money through legitimate companies and planned to expose them.
Luca had been ordered to drive Gabriel that night.
Their car was forced off the road.
Luca survived.
Gabriel did not.
“Who ordered it?” I asked.
Luca looked toward Charles.
My stepfather’s face changed.
But Luca shook his head.
“Not him.”
Charles exhaled.
“Charles is greedy,” Luca said. “Not important.”
Charles looked insulted despite being effectively accused of selling me.
Luca explained that Gabriel had anticipated betrayal.
He created a hidden archive attached to his trust.
Only his biological child could activate it.
Me.
The missing millions were bait.
Preston’s gambling problems provided access.
Charles’s greed provided cooperation.
And my hidden identity provided the key.
Vittorio was furious.
“You manipulated her family into bringing her here.”
“Yes.”
“You forged my seal.”
“Yes.”
“You terrified an innocent woman.”
Luca’s expression faltered.
“It was the only way.”
Vittorio stepped toward him.
“No. It was the easiest way for you.”
That was the first moment I understood the difference between them.
Both men could frighten a room.
Only one seemed to care what fear did to innocent people.
Luca handed me a small brass key.
Gabriel’s archive was supposedly beneath the mansion.
Sofia knew the room.
Nobody had opened it in decades.
Vittorio refused to let me go alone.
We descended together.
Behind a wine cellar wall was an old steel door.
My key fit.
Inside we found boxes.
Letters.
Photographs.
Corporate records.
And one video cassette labeled:
FOR MY CHILD.
Vittorio found an old player.
The screen flickered.
A man appeared.
My father.
Gabriel Serrano.
I had never seen him before.
Yet I recognized my own eyes.
He spoke directly toward the camera.
He said that if his child was watching, then the danger he feared had survived him.
He apologized for leaving a burden behind.
Then he named the organization he had discovered.
The Bellini Partnership.
I looked toward Luca.
His face went white.
Gabriel continued.
Luca Bellini had not been helping him.
Luca had been the man Gabriel feared.
Vittorio turned.
But Luca was already gone.
Then Gabriel said something else.
“The person protecting Luca is inside my family.”
The video cut.
A noise came from behind us.
The steel door slammed shut.
Vittorio rushed toward it.
Locked.
Then my phone vibrated despite having no signal.
One message appeared from an unknown number.
May you like
DON’T TRUST SOFIA.
Above us, someone began unlocking the vault door from the outside.
