Chapter 5 - ISABELLA'S SIDE OF THE STORY
I expected the first meeting between Luca and his sister to be full of shouting.
Instead, it began with two chairs placed too far apart.
Harriet Sloan's office overlooked the Chicago River. Its windows were tall, the carpet plain, and its shelves crowded with legal books that looked as though nobody had chosen them for decoration. Isabella sat beside the window in a gray cardigan. She had lost weight since I last saw her, but the first thing I noticed was the fierce concentration in her expression.
"Emma," she said when I entered. "You brought the piano downstairs."
"Yes, Miss Isabella."
"Thank you. And please call me Isabella. You've known me long enough."
I sat where she indicated. Luca remained standing until she nodded toward the far chair.
"You can sit, Luca. I haven't invited you here for a duel."
He gave a strained smile.
"I was worried," he said.
"So I was told."
"I'm sorry."
"For which part?"
The question was quiet enough to make me look down.
Luca leaned forward. "For signing Vanessa's recommendation without speaking to you. For believing you needed a rest when I should have asked why you were afraid. For letting her decide which messages reached me."
Isabella studied him. "That is a beginning."
He nodded and said nothing more.
She had asked me to come because she wanted a person present who had not spent decades arguing about which Moretti controlled what. She said it with a faint smile, but I understood the seriousness beneath it.
"I found the suspicious agreement four months ago," she began. "I had asked for a financial report on Mother's music program. The scholarship numbers looked wrong. We were telling donors that nearly two hundred children had received lessons. Several schools told me they hadn't seen an instructor for months."
Luca frowned. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I did. I sent a report to your office. Your assistant replied that you were busy. Vanessa offered to help me straighten it out."
"I never saw that report."
"I believe you now," she said. "I didn't then."
She reached into her handbag and removed a thin folder. It contained copies of invoices from Bellini Arts Management, a private company hired to administer the charitable archive. The invoices charged the trust for catalog services, digitization, and licensing support. Isabella had checked addresses, contacted instructors, and discovered that several services had never been delivered.
"The amounts weren't enormous individually," she said. "Ten thousand here. Twenty thousand there. But the same pattern repeated for years. Then I saw a proposed sale of Mother's original recordings to Alder Music Holdings for less than the cost of restoring the piano."
"What are those recordings worth?" I asked.
"The value needs an independent assessment. Some were unpublished. Some include performances by musicians who later became famous. But the bigger issue is that Mother's trust wasn't supposed to sell them for private profit. The licensing income paid for scholarships."
Luca looked at the floor. "I signed quarterly summaries."
"Yes," Isabella replied. "And you never read the attachments."
I watched him absorb that without defending himself.
Isabella continued. A month earlier, she had arranged to meet Harriet and bring her the suspicious documents. Vanessa learned about the appointment and told Isabella the family had found a quiet residence where she could work undisturbed. Luca's signed recommendation, the one he had believed was harmless, was presented as proof he supported the idea.
"I agreed to visit," Isabella said. "I thought I could go for a day, inspect the rehearsal rooms, and come home. When I said I wanted to leave, the director told me I had signed a longer stay. They took my telephone for 'digital rest.' I said no. They said the paperwork was final."
"Did they threaten you?" Luca asked.
"They told me my brother believed I was exhausted and unreliable. They told me the trust would lose funding if I made a public scene. When I tried to leave through the gate, somebody stood in front of it. I was not free to go."
Her voice remained steady, but her fingers were clasped tightly in her lap.
"I'm not asking you to settle it for me," she added. "I've reported what happened. My attorney is helping me."
"I know," Luca said.
That was what she needed to hear.
We took a break. Harriet brought tea. Isabella opened the window a few inches, letting in a sharp October breeze. She closed her eyes while the street noise rose from below, then turned toward me.
"Did you see the seventh keytop?"
"Only in the jeweler's photograph. Vanessa kept it."
"She must have recognized the mark."
"B-714?"
Isabella nodded. "Mother used the number as a memory aid. Blue archive, seventh floor, cabinet fourteen. When she became ill, she feared the catalog would be scattered. She hid a duplicate location in the piano so I'd always be able to find the original inventory."
"Why didn't you look for it sooner?" Luca asked.
"Because I thought it was a childhood game. After Mother died, Father told me the original archive had been inventoried and transferred. I believed him. Then I discovered last spring that certain tapes were missing from the digital catalog."
"Could your father have arranged the transfer?"
"Possibly. But he wasn't the only trustee. Mother had appointed independent custodians. The paperwork should show every transfer."
Harriet returned with a list of archive custodians. The original independent firm had closed, but a successor still held records. She had requested preservation of those records and was seeking court-authorized access.
"Vanessa knew I had found the number," Isabella said. "I wrote it on a sheet of music and left the page in my guest room. She told me she was planning a surprise restoration for Luca's wedding and asked whether the piano was original. At the time, I thought she was being kind."
"Then she removed the keytops," I said.
"And the bench."
A terrible realization passed over her face. "Did she damage the bench?"
"One leg is cracked," I admitted. "But the compartment and most of the wood are intact. The conservator is examining it."
"Thank God. Mother carved my name there when I learned to play my first piece without stopping."
Luca looked up. "I remember. I was supposed to hold the flashlight."
For the first time, Isabella smiled at him genuinely.
"You kept shining it in my eyes."
"I was eight."
"You were impossible."
He laughed, a broken little sound, and then they were silent again. Reconciliation did not arrive all at once. It came in brief moments when they both remembered being children.
After lunch, Isabella asked to speak with me alone. Harriet offered a small conference room. When we closed the door, Isabella leaned against the table.
"Emma, Vanessa told me you were helping her dispose of the piano."
I felt sick. "She told you that?"
"In a message before I went to Wisconsin. She said you had agreed the instrument was beyond repair. I was angry with you."
"I didn't know about the plans until the movers arrived."
"I believe you. I wanted to tell you because you should know how easily my anger was directed at the wrong person."
I appreciated the honesty. I had feared Isabella might think I had betrayed her.
"I shouldn't have needed thirty-four people watching before I said no," I admitted.
"You work for my brother. Vanessa threatened your job. Saying no at all was difficult."
I told her about my mother, about the old notebook and the calls made to the piano-repair shop. Isabella listened carefully.
"Is your mother safe?" she asked.
"Yes. But I'm worried they'll bother her again."
"Tell Detective Chen. And don't try to be the person who finds everything."
Mrs. Carver had said almost the same thing.
Before we left, Harriet showed Isabella the newest court filing. A temporary preservation order had been granted, preventing the trust from transferring its major music assets while the disputed signatures and administration were examined. It did not prove fraud. It did mean the collection could not quietly disappear that weekend.
Luca offered to drive his sister home.
"Not to the mansion," she replied. "I'm staying with Naomi. I'll visit when I'm ready."
He nodded.
At the elevator, Isabella reached out and touched his sleeve.
"I don't hate you," she said. "I was frightened that you would choose Vanessa over me if she told you I was unstable."
Luca closed his eyes. "I did choose not to listen."
"Then choose differently next time."
He promised to try, and she let him hug her briefly.
When she left, I found him standing beside Harriet's office window. The city shone beneath us, beautiful and indifferent.
"I nearly lost my sister because I signed something without reading it," he said.
"You also have a chance to change what happens next," I answered.
He turned toward me. "And you? What happens next for you, Emma?"
I thought of the money I sent home, the shifts I needed, and the old instrument that had held a story for seventeen years.
"I want to learn restoration properly," I said. "Not just dust old things until somebody wealthy tells me to throw them away."
"I could arrange a position—"
"Please don't," I interrupted. "Not yet. I want to apply somewhere on my own."
He was silent, then nodded.
"All right."
It was a small answer, but it showed me he had heard.
In the hallway my phone vibrated. A message had arrived from an unknown number.
Your mother's apartment is a long way from the Moretti mansion. Think carefully about the next piano you decide to save.
I read it once, then again.
I did not answer.
I went back to Harriet's office, showed her the screen, and asked her to contact Detective Chen.
May you like
The message frightened me. But it also confirmed that the people behind the missing music knew exactly where to find someone who couldn't afford security guards or a powerful last name.
And I had no intention of letting that fact remain invisible.
