Chapter 7 - The Traitor at Moretti House
Chloe held the certificate against her chest.
“Tell me.”
Salvatore looked at Maria.
Maria had followed them into the room.
“No,” she said.
Chloe turned on her.
“No more.”
Maria’s face broke.
“Chloe—”
“No more protecting me with lies.”
Vincent handed Chloe the document.
The faint name beneath the ink was visible.
Daniel Bennett.
Chloe blinked.
“That’s my father.”
Maria nodded.
Relief and confusion collided.
“Then why hide it?”
Salvatore answered.
“Because Daniel Bennett wasn’t his real name.”
Vincent’s gaze sharpened.
Salvatore continued.
“His name was Daniel Moretti.”
Chloe stared at Vincent.
Vincent stared back.
“No,” Maria said quickly. “Not Carlo’s son. Daniel was his cousin.”
Chloe exhaled.
The revelation still changed everything.
She had Moretti blood.
Salvatore smiled bitterly.
“Now you understand why I watched you.”
“You were afraid of me?”
“I was afraid of what you could inherit.”
Daniel had owned shares in several Moretti companies.
After his death, they legally passed to Chloe.
But no one had told her.
Those shares represented enough voting power to disrupt Salvatore’s control.
Derek hadn’t only been looking for Maria’s evidence.
He had been looking for documents proving Chloe’s identity.
“You could have told me,” Chloe said.
Maria cried quietly.
“I wanted you free.”
“I wasn’t free.”
“No.”
Maria finally admitted it.
“I made the wrong choice.”
That mattered more than another excuse.
Chloe didn’t forgive her immediately.
But she heard her.
Vincent turned to Salvatore.
“You ordered the bomb.”
Salvatore did not deny it.
“I ordered a warning.”
“A bomb is an unusual warning.”
“You were becoming Carlo.”
“I was seventeen.”
“You were already his heir.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“And you decided I should die.”
Salvatore’s expression hardened.
“I decided the Moretti empire mattered more than one boy.”
Chloe saw Vincent absorb that.
Then something unexpected happened.
He lowered his gun.
“No.”
Salvatore frowned.
Vincent called the authorities.
Not the police officers named in the ledger.
Federal investigators Maria had contacted years earlier.
Salvatore laughed.
“You’d hand your own family to them?”
Vincent looked at Chloe.
“Some things shouldn’t be inherited.”
The agents arrived before sunrise.
Salvatore was taken away.
For a moment, it seemed finished.
Then Vincent received a call.
Marco had escaped St. Catherine’s.
Three guards were dead.
And he had taken Derek.
Chloe closed her eyes.
She shouldn’t care.
Derek had terrorized her.
Manipulated her.
Betrayed her.
But he had also kicked the table when Marco aimed at Vincent.
People could do terrible things and one decent thing without erasing either.
Vincent understood.
“We’ll find him.”
“Why?”
“Because Marco wants us to.”
His phone buzzed.
A video arrived.
Derek sat bound in a warehouse.
Marco stood behind him.
“Bring Chloe,” Marco said to the camera. “She owns something I need.”
The video ended.
A second file appeared.
It was a photograph of Maria leaving Moretti House ten minutes earlier.
Chloe turned.
“Where’s my mother?”
Vincent ran downstairs.
The front door stood open.
Maria’s coat lay on the floor.
Her phone was beside it.
May you like
And on the screen was a single message from Marco.
ONE DAUGHTER. ONE MOTHER. CHOOSE.
