Chapter 8 - THE SIGNATURE IN THE WRONG HAND
Celeste Valenti requested a formal interview two days after Sofia was rescued. She wanted a lawyer present, and Detective Bennett agreed. I learned about it because the prosecutor's office asked me to review a written summary of Celeste's statement where it related to my employment and the assault.
The meeting took place in a plain room with a long table, paper cups, and a clock that ticked loudly. Celeste had traded her emerald evening gown for a charcoal jacket. Without diamonds, she looked younger and smaller, but I didn't forget the force of her ring against my face.
She didn't look at me when I entered.
"Miss Brooks is here for limited questions," Bennett explained. "She isn't here to negotiate with you."
Celeste's lawyer nodded. Matteo had not come. That was intentional. I wanted to hear my own story explained without his presence becoming the center of it.
"Why was my application in Richard Hale's office?" I asked.
Celeste folded her hands. "He handled household staffing for the foundation."
"That's not an answer."
She swallowed. "Dante was afraid Giuseppe had hidden records in the cellar. He didn't know which barrel. He thought a new housekeeper could rotate through the room and report if anything unusual appeared."
"You picked me?"
"Richard did. Your references were excellent. You needed steady work, and they thought you wouldn't ask questions about unusual tasks."
Anger burned beneath my bandages. I'd worked double shifts, skipped family dinners, and counted pennies because I was proud to support my mother and brother. People in a beautiful office had looked at that same effort and seen an opportunity to control me.
"Were you told to hurt me?" I asked.
Celeste shook her head. "No. Dante said if you found anything, I should take it and call Richard. I panicked when you pulled out Giuseppe's letter."
"You didn't panic when you ordered me to serve dinner bleeding."
She lowered her eyes. "No. I wanted you to stay where I could see you until I knew what you'd told Matteo."
Bennett noted the answer. I asked one more question.
"Did you know Sofia Romano was alive?"
Celeste's mouth tightened. "I knew there was a woman called Mary. My father told me she was dangerous, mentally unstable, and trying to take money that belonged to our families. When I saw her at the orchard, she asked if Matteo was alive. That's when I realized most of what I'd been told was a lie."
"But you said nothing to him."
"I thought if I got married first, I could convince my father to let her go."
The explanation was so selfish that I struggled to speak. Celeste had imagined she could trade a marriage for a woman's freedom and still emerge as a generous person.
I remembered the household meetings before the engagement. Celeste had spoken about floral arrangements, imported linen, and which staff members looked presentable enough to enter the dining room. I used to think her attention to detail was simply a rich woman's vanity. Now I understood it as practice: the habit of treating living people like objects to be arranged. I could see her sitting across from me, pale and frightened, and still remember that she had chosen to make me bleed. I did not need to hate her for the rest of my life to refuse her excuses today.
"Did you ever actually ask them to release her?" I said.
"I told my father it wasn't right."
"That's not what I asked."
"No," she whispered.
I sat back. Something in me had been waiting for a dramatic revelation that would turn Celeste into a different person. Instead, she remained a woman who had understood enough to recognize suffering and had chosen comfort over action.
Her attorney asked for a pause. Bennett agreed. Outside the room, the detective offered me water.
"You did well," she said.
"I feel terrible."
"Those can both be true."
I thought about Celeste's trembling hands and felt no triumph. My face still hurt when I washed it. My shoulder would scar. She could be frightened of Dante and still be accountable for what she had done to me.
Later that afternoon, the investigators brought another document to Matteo's lawyer. It was the revised family settlement Celeste had intended to present at their wedding. The signature line labeled MATTEO ROMANO already held a dark, sloping signature. The problem was simple: Matteo had never signed it.
An independent examiner would assess the writing, but the electronic preparation history showed the document had been created in Richard Hale's office. A metadata entry listed a draft author using Dante's foundation account. The contract would have shifted control of real estate, securities, and trust votes after Matteo signed a set of related documents at the ceremony. The forged draft alone could not legally transfer them, but it revealed the plan to deceive him.
"They weren't just hiding my mother," Matteo said when we spoke that evening. "They were preparing to strip every asset my father left behind."
"Some of those assets came from what Dante was doing, didn't they?"
He looked at me for a long moment. "Yes. And some came from things I did."
I hadn't expected him to answer so plainly.
"What things?"
"Enforcing debts through fear. Letting people who worked for me intimidate owners into selling. I told myself I was keeping the family stable and that I wasn't as cruel as the men who came before me."
"Were you?"
"Sometimes. Not always." He rubbed a hand over his face. "I've hired independent counsel. I'm giving investigators financial records they haven't asked for yet. I don't know what the consequences will be."
I stared at him. A man could protect a maid from his fiancée and still have hurt other people in ways she never saw. I had always known he was powerful. Now he was choosing to speak about what that power had cost.
"You can't undo it by finding your mother," I said.
"I know."
"And you can't undo it by being kind to me."
"I know that too."
I believed he meant it. Believing him didn't mean I owed him anything.
The next morning, Ben drove me to the local historical society where I'd applied for a temporary records assistant position. The interviewer, Ms. Graham, looked at my résumé rather than my bruises. She asked how I organized incomplete inventories, how I distinguished originals from copies, and how I handled confidential material.
For the first time in weeks, the questions were about what I could do.
I left the interview with a cautious smile. On the way home, I picked up soup for my mother and a ridiculous chocolate muffin for Ben. He said it was the first sensible thing I'd done all month.
That night, Matteo called again. His voice was strained.
"My uncle contacted my attorney," he said. "He offered to reveal every location where my mother had been held if I withdrew the records I've given Bennett."
"But Sofia's already home."
"He doesn't know she has everything she hid in the treatment room. He thinks he can still make the past disappear."
"So what did you say?"
"Nothing. I forwarded the message to the prosecutor."
I was quiet for a moment. "That must have been hard."
"It was easier than I expected. I'm tired of pretending family loyalty means keeping other people's secrets."
Before we ended the call, he asked whether I'd be willing to attend a supervised review of the estate's archived records. Police and evidence technicians would be present. An old inventory code I had used might help them identify the box Giuseppe mentioned in his letter.
I wanted to say no. It was the mansion again, with the same corridors and the same cellar. But the review would take place in a ground-floor records annex, under official supervision, and my doctor had cleared me for light activity.
"I'll go for one hour," I said. "My brother will bring me."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I might not recognize anything."
"Then you won't. That won't make your help worthless."
The next day, I entered the mansion through the front door for the first time. Marco greeted me without asking for a tray. The great hallway smelled of fresh polish, but the white engagement roses were gone. The walls looked bare where the flowers had been.
Inside the records annex, detectives had arranged labeled boxes beneath bright work lights. Bennett showed me a catalogue from seven years earlier. A handwritten star marked an entry beside the words BELL—PRIVATE.
I frowned. "Bell wasn't a wine producer. It was a household storage category. They used it for things belonging to someone outside the estate."
Sofia Bell, I thought. Mary Bell. The alias appeared everywhere.
The catalogue pointed to a locked storage cabinet in the adjacent service room. Bennett obtained the key from the estate manager. Inside was a narrow metal case wrapped in a tablecloth.
An evidence technician opened it.
There were microfilm reels, handwritten account books, and a small portable recorder. On the recorder's label, Giuseppe had written a date: the day before the warehouse fire.
Bennett pressed no buttons until the device was logged and examined. But she let me read the words on the label.
IF I AM WRONG ABOUT MY BROTHER, DESTROY THIS. IF I AM RIGHT, PLAY IT FOR MATTEO.
May you like
For the first time, I wondered how much Giuseppe had known before he walked into the burning warehouse.
And how much he had already recorded.
