Chapter 6 - The Last Lie
Dante stared through the broken window.
Antonio Moretti was alive.
Older.
Thinner.
But alive.
Dante felt no joy.
Only rage.
Antonio entered without resistance.
“Son.”
“Don't call me that.”
Antonio looked toward Isabella.
Pain crossed his face.
“You brought her into this?”
“She was already in it.”
Lorenzo entered behind him.
Dante drew his weapon.
Antonio raised a hand.
“Wait.”
“Your doctor poisoned my wife.”
“Yes.”
The admission silenced everyone.
Dante pointed the gun at Lorenzo.
Antonio stepped between them.
“Then why is he alive?”
“Because he can prove who ordered it.”
Dante laughed bitterly.
“You?”
“No.”
Antonio explained the final layer.
Years earlier, a network of corrupt business partners had used the Moretti organization without Dante's knowledge.
Antonio tried to destroy it from within.
He staged Isabella's death to protect her.
Later, when Chiara discovered the accounts, Lorenzo was ordered to frighten her with a nonlethal drug.
But the dosage was changed.
Chiara died.
“Who changed it?”
Antonio looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel lowered his eyes.
“My son.”
Elena gasped.
“Matteo?”
Gabriel nodded.
Matteo had been recruited by the network.
He had believed Chiara's death would force Antonio to surrender control.
Instead it destroyed everyone.
“Where is he?” Elena whispered.
A voice answered from the doorway.
“Here.”
Matteo stepped inside.
Elena stopped breathing.
Mia whispered:
“Daddy?”
The gun fell from Matteo's hand.
He looked at his daughter.
Then Elena.
Whatever hardened expression he had prepared disappeared.
Dante stepped toward him.
“You killed my wife.”
Matteo shook his head.
“I changed the vial. I didn't know the concentration would kill her.”
“You expect that to matter?”
“No.”
Matteo reached inside his jacket.
Marco raised his gun.
“Slowly.”
Matteo produced a flash drive.
“This contains everything. Accounts. Payments. Names. Every person still involved.”
“Why give it to me?”
Matteo looked at Mia.
“Because my daughter crawled under that piano and found what none of us had the courage to face.”
Police sirens sounded outside.
Dante looked at Antonio.
“You called them?”
“No.”
Isabella stepped forward.
“I did.”
For the first time, Dante understood.
His mother had not returned to rebuild the Moretti empire.
She had returned to end it.
Matteo surrendered.
Lorenzo surrendered.
Gabriel agreed to testify.
Vittorio survived the gunshot.
And Antonio finally handed Dante the documents that could dismantle the criminal network permanently.
But one question remained.
“Why did Chiara hide the cassette beneath the piano?”
Antonio looked toward him.
“She didn't.”
Dante frowned.
“Then who did?”
Antonio reached into his coat.
He produced a photograph taken inside Dante's mansion three weeks earlier.
Someone was kneeling beneath Chiara's piano.
Dante took the photograph.
His blood ran cold.
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The person in the photograph was someone who had been living under his roof.
Elena.
