Chapter 6 - The Name Inside the Notebook
Marin's nursing badge was deactivated before noon.
By one o'clock, two investigators arrived.
Someone had submitted medical records showing that Marin administered an unauthorized medication to Adelaide the night of the attack.
The signature looked like hers.
The timestamp matched.
The medication did not.
"I never gave this."
The investigator remained neutral.
"We'll determine that."
Adelaide demanded to speak.
"I was there."
"You were medically compromised."
"I am old, not stupid."
Marin touched her shoulder.
"Let them work."
Elias watched Marin.
"You aren't angry?"
"I'm furious."
"You don't look furious."
"I learned a long time ago that looking furious rarely improves paperwork."
Despite everything, Elias smiled.
The investigators took Marin's nursing bag.
Her records.
Her badge.
Then they left.
For the first time in years, Marin was not legally allowed to work as a nurse.
She stood in the hallway staring at her empty hands.
Adelaide cried.
Marin sat beside her.
"This isn't your fault."
"It happened because of me."
"No. It happened because someone is scared."
"Of you?"
"Of what we found."
Elias approached.
"My attorney will handle it."
Marin looked up.
"No."
"No?"
"I don't need you buying my license back."
"That's not what I said."
"It's what people like you do."
"People like me?"
"Powerful men who believe every problem is a door requiring a bigger shoulder."
Elias considered that.
"And people like you?"
"We find the key."
He almost laughed.
"Fine. Find it."
They started with the medical record.
The forged entry contained one error.
The person who created it had copied Marin's current documentation style.
But fourteen months earlier, Marin had used a different abbreviation for medication routes.
Whoever forged it knew how she charted now.
That meant the person had recent access.
They checked the estate's internal medical terminal.
Six people had credentials.
Marin.
Two relief nurses.
Adelaide's physician.
The nursing coordinator.
And Raymond Cross.
Raymond's credentials had already been compromised.
Too obvious.
Dominic traced the login.
The forged entry came from Adelaide's bedroom terminal during the blackout.
"Impossible," Elias said.
"The terminal had no power."
"Exactly."
Someone created the record elsewhere, then altered the server timestamp.
Dominic found another anomaly.
A hidden administrator account.
Username: VHOLLIS.
Marin stared.
"Vittorio Hollis?"
"No," Dominic said. "Created eleven years ago."
Elias looked at the letters.
"Vittorio Ferrante and Nathan Hollis."
A shared account.
His father and hers had built a hidden access route into the family network.
Dominic opened it.
Inside were encrypted folders.
One unlocked using the two verification keys.
Thousands of documents appeared.
Anthony's network.
Payments.
Names.
Dates.
And audio recordings.
The final folder was labeled:
IF ADELAIDE OPENS THIS, WE FAILED.
Adelaide covered her mouth.
Elias clicked.
Vittorio's voice filled the room.
"If you're hearing this, Anthony is still alive."
Adelaide began crying.
Vittorio explained everything.
Anthony had built the network.
Nathan discovered it.
Vittorio tried to stop him.
But Anthony had help from someone inside the family operation.
Someone Vittorio trusted.
Someone who continued protecting Anthony even after his supposed death.
The recording distorted.
Then returned.
"I never learned his name. Nathan did."
Marin leaned closer.
"My father knew?"
Vittorio continued.
"Nathan wrote it somewhere no one would understand unless they knew his habits."
The recording ended.
Everyone looked at Marin.
His habits.
Obituaries.
Numbers.
The last page.
Marin grabbed her father's clipping.
Three daughters and one unfinished song.
3-1.
Then the birthday card.
Pi.
She suddenly understood.
"It's not a code to the account."
"What is it?" Elias asked.
"It's a page reference."
"To what?"
Marin looked toward Adelaide's leather notebook.
Nathan had loved books.
But there was one book Marin remembered him carrying everywhere.
A pocket medical dictionary.
She had kept it.
It was still inside her safe-deposit box.
They returned to the bank.
Page 314.
Line 15.
The word was:
REGENT.
Elias frowned.
"A ruler acting for someone else."
Marin turned to the next digits.
9-2-6.
Page 926.
Line 5.
The word:
CROSS.
Everyone went silent.
Raymond Cross.
"No," Elias said.
Raymond had served his family eighteen years.
But eighteen years meant he had been there when Vittorio died.
When Anthony disappeared.
When Nathan was killed.
They rushed back to the estate.
Raymond was gone.
His room had been emptied.
Dominic found a message on his terminal.
YOU'RE READING THE WRONG NAME.
Marin stared.
"Cross wasn't identifying Raymond."
"What else?"
She returned to the dictionary.
Regent.
Cross.
Then the remaining digits.
Page 358.
Line 9.
One word.
DOMINIC.
Nobody spoke.
Elias looked toward Dominic.
Dominic looked equally stunned.
"That's impossible."
Marin checked again.
Same word.
Elias stepped away from him.
Dominic raised both hands.
"I didn't know Nathan."
"But my father did," Elias said.
"I was twenty-six."
"You worked here."
"Yes."
"You had access."
"Not to this."
Elias's face hardened.
"Your ring opened the service entrance."
"Someone copied it."
"Your initials were in my mother's notebook."
"She wrote that I didn't know."
"Maybe that was the lie."
Dominic looked at Adelaide.
"Tell him."
Adelaide shook her head.
"I don't know."
Then Marin noticed something.
The dictionary was old.
Very old.
Published twenty years earlier.
The page references might not point to words.
They might point to letters within words.
She started again.
3-1-4-1-5-9.
Not pages.
Positions.
She wrote the words together.
REGENTCROSSDOMINIC.
Then extracted the numbered letters.
The result formed a name.
Six letters.
Marin stopped.
Elias looked down.
His face lost all color.
The name was not Dominic.
It was someone far closer.
Someone whose photograph still hung in the estate hallway.
Marin whispered it.
"Victor."
From behind them came the sound of a cane striking marble.
Adelaide turned toward the doorway.
Her eyes widened.
May you like
Because only one person in the Ferrante family had ever called Vittorio by the childhood nickname Victor.
And that person was supposed to have been dead for seventeen years.
