Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO SIGNED TWICE
Two days after the engagement dinner, the Moretti mansion looked like a house where the music had stopped in the middle of a song.
The white roses had been removed. The engagement portraits were turned toward the wall. Workers dismantled the floral arch outside the ballroom while the kitchen staff spoke in low voices about schedules, interviews, and whether they would still have jobs next month.
I wasn't there to work. I was there to meet with Eleanor Price and collect some clothes from my room. Grace came with me, partly because the doctors had ordered me to protect my hands and partly because she had developed an extraordinary talent for looking at wealthy men as though they were delayed buses.
"You don't have to stay," Luca said when we entered the study.
"I'm not staying," I replied. "I'm taking my belongings."
He looked down at the bandages. "I meant in the house, not the employment. But that too is your choice."
I thought about my overdue rent and the savings that barely existed. Freedom was easier to praise than to afford. Luca had kept my wages going while I recovered, but I wasn't ready to decide what came next.
"There's a meeting first," I said.
Eleanor spread several documents across the study table. She had located the successor company that held the old storage archive. The preserved inventory included transaction records connected to the payments my father had questioned. Not all the boxes still existed, and some contents were missing, but one item had caught her attention: a duplicate authorization bearing the signatures of Victor Bellini and a man named Simon Reed.
"Who is Simon Reed?" Grace asked.
"He was the foundation's contracted bookkeeper," Isabella answered. "He left after your father was dismissed. I was told he moved to Florida."
Eleanor placed another sheet beside the first. "This is from the corporate filings for Bellini Community Solutions. Simon Reed was also listed as an officer there. Different address. Same identification number."
Grace leaned closer. "He approved payments from the foundation and received them through the company?"
"That is one possible interpretation," Eleanor said. "We need original records and explanations before treating it as established."
I recognized the careful tone. It did not make the information any less ugly.
Isabella went very still. "Simon was Samuel's assistant. He brought me his reports. He told me the questions were an accounting disagreement."
"Did you speak with Dad before they fired him?" I asked.
She lowered her eyes. "Once. He begged me to look at the supporting invoices. I said I would. Antonio was ill, and I handed the matter to the finance committee. I let them tell me what was true."
Her voice cracked on the last word. For a moment the room contained neither a mafia boss nor a servant, only people realizing how easy it had been to trust the wrong person because doing otherwise required work.
"He came home that night and said nobody wanted to know," I told her. "I was twelve. I thought he meant nobody liked him."
Isabella pressed a hand to her mouth. Luca moved toward her, but she lifted her other hand to stop him.
"Let me hear it," she said. "She has every right to say it."
The meeting continued with a review of a proposed property transaction. A building once held for Harbor House's expansion had been leased to an affiliated development company on unusually favorable terms. That company was associated with Vittorio Bellini, Vanessa's father. The arrangement could be challenged, Eleanor explained, but the shelter's financial future depended on identifying who had authority to make and approve it.
Luca stared at the property map. "My mother thought that building was reserved for transitional apartments."
"It was," Isabella said. "I attended the dedication."
"Then someone changed the deed or the board authorization," Grace replied.
Eleanor nodded. "We're checking both. And the records may show more than one period of misconduct. We shouldn't force every mistake into one conspiracy just because the names overlap."
At noon Marco arrived carrying a report from the mansion's door-access system. The catering contractor, Daniel Frost, had entered the building with a temporary badge issued under the name Simon Reed. A photograph from the personnel file showed a gray-haired man nearly seventy. Frost was in his thirties.
"Someone used a false identity," Marco said. "But there's another issue. The badge request was approved by one of our own administrative staff."
"Who?" Luca asked.
"Moira Dawson."
Moira was the head housekeeper. She had trained me to fold linen, measure furniture covers, and find every spare key without waking the household. She was stern, fair, and deeply loyal to Isabella. I could not imagine her willingly helping Vanessa endanger anyone.
"You should ask her," I said.
"I will," Luca replied. "Not accuse her. Ask."
Moira came to the study looking puzzled and offended. She listened to Marco, then pulled a small appointment book from her pocket. The temporary badge had been requested while she was at a dental appointment. Her password, she admitted, had been written on a slip inside an unlocked desk drawer for the convenience of substitute staff.
Marco looked miserable. "That's a serious security failure."
"It is," Moira said, straightening. "And I'll answer for it. But I did not authorize that man."
Luca ordered an independent review of the access controls instead of dismissing her on the spot. I saw relief pass over Moira's face, mixed with shame. Nobody was exempt from accountability, but neither was anyone automatically guilty because their name appeared on a computer screen.
When the meeting ended, I asked Moira whether Margaret was recovering. She nodded. "Margaret wants to return to cooking. She says nobody will ever stop her from labeling a dessert correctly again."
"I owe her my life," Isabella said quietly.
"You owe her a kitchen where she can say no without being locked outside," I replied.
The words slipped out before I could soften them. I expected the room to freeze. Instead Luca nodded.
"You're right."
Later, while Grace packed my uniforms, I went to the conservatory for a few minutes of silence. Glass walls opened onto the garden, now silver with rain. I had always liked that room because Isabella kept plants she couldn't remember the names of and insisted they grew better when someone talked to them.
Luca found me near a lemon tree. He remained at the doorway, giving me the choice to invite him closer.
"I'm sorry for what happened here," he said.
"I know."
"That's not enough."
"No, it isn't."
He nodded. "For years I thought protecting my people meant being ready to fight anyone who threatened us. I wasn't looking at the people who worked in my kitchen."
"It wasn't only Vanessa. I was afraid to report damaged equipment because supervisors cared more about dinner service than repairs. Margaret was told to ignore the allergy chart. People were afraid of getting fired, and nobody upstairs heard us."
He listened without interruption. That was the beginning of something I had not expected: not trust, exactly, but the possibility of being heard without becoming someone's inspiration story.
"I've asked an outside workplace adviser to review the estate's employment practices," Luca said. "Staff can speak privately, without my managers in the room. I'd like your opinion on the process, but only if you want to give it."
"Pay them for the time," I said. "And make sure people who disagree with you don't disappear."
"I will."
I looked at his immaculate suit and the tattoos disappearing beneath his cuffs. He was a dangerous man. I knew that. He did not become harmless because he apologized to a maid in a greenhouse. But when he stepped aside to let Grace pass with my suitcase, I saw him making a choice that had nothing to do with power.
In the driveway a car was waiting to take us home. Marco approached with a new discovery from the access review. Someone had requested a second set of badges under the false name Simon Reed. One had been used at the foundation's downtown office at dawn, three hours after the engagement dinner collapsed.
"What room?" Luca asked.
"Records storage," Marco replied. "The entry was logged, but the camera angle was blocked by a maintenance screen."
Eleanor emerged from the house with her phone pressed to her ear. She listened, thanked the caller, then turned toward us.
"The storage company's audit team found an amended inventory," she said. "A box was removed from the archive the same morning. The pickup authorization was signed by Victor Bellini."
"What's in the box?" I asked.
Eleanor looked straight at me.
"The original board minutes from the day your father was fired."
May you like
I stood beside the car, my hands aching inside their dressings. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make sure an eight-year-old decision remained buried.
And now, for the first time, we knew exactly which document they were afraid of losing.
