Chapter 6 - THE OTHER VOICE
When Luca learned that his login credentials had been used while he was overseas, his first instinct was to have the company's servers shut down. Ruth Kaplan stopped him before he reached for his phone.
"Preserve, don't destroy," she said. "We need an independent forensic copy. If you wipe the system, you may erase the very evidence that proves you didn't authorize those transfers."
Luca stared at the rows of electronic approvals on the auditor's screen. His name appeared beside each one, bright and precise, without any indication of where he had been at the time. He remembered the long nights when Dominic persuaded him that paperwork was beneath his attention. He had mistaken convenience for trust.
"I have to tell the board," he said.
"You do. And the authorities investigating the payments."
He did both. For the first time in years, Luca gave an account of his own mistakes before anyone threatened to expose them. Several directors were furious. Others were frightened by the possibility of more irregularities. An outside committee was appointed to review the accounts and remove Dominic's authority while the inquiry continued. The company's ordinary employees would still be paid; no one wanted hundreds of innocent people carrying the cost of misconduct at the top.
At the same time, Detective Chen arranged for a forensic audio specialist, Dr. Naomi Feld, to speak with me. She asked me to describe what I'd heard in the music room, then showed me a visual representation of the recovered recording.
"This line is where the background noise changes," she said. "Here, the voice was recorded in a different room. The sentence is assembled from at least four source fragments."
"Can you tell what Luca actually said?"
"Not from this file alone. But we can compare it with originals."
She played an archival business meeting from two years earlier. Luca's voice was unmistakable, but the subject was an employee who had received threats near the family residence.
"I want that girl protected," he said in the old meeting. "Get those men out of my house and away from her."
Dr. Feld paused. "Notice the words 'I want that,' then 'girl,' then 'out of my house.' They appear in your edited file in a different arrangement."
My skin prickled. Vanessa had taken a sentence about protecting someone and turned it into one about rejecting a child. The cruelty had been more precise than I imagined.
"Did Elliott create the whole recording?" I asked.
"We can link certain files to his workstation. Intent and instructions are questions for the investigators and the court."
I appreciated her careful answer. It respected the work of proving things rather than merely feeling certain.
After the appointment, I walked slowly along the hospital corridor. My hands had improved enough for light tasks, but fatigue still arrived without warning. Ben waited downstairs with coffee. He had swapped shifts twice to drive me, and I worried he would lose money because of it.
"I'll manage the bus next time," I said.
"You can. But I had today off. Stop trying to repay every favor before the person has finished giving it."
He showed me an email from a community college. I had mentioned an introductory course in audio engineering, and he'd found that applications were still open. "You could ask about financial aid," he said. "You always loved Dad's radios."
I stared at the screen. For eleven months, my world had been determined by which room needed cleaning and whether Vanessa was in a bad mood. The possibility of choosing a different future felt almost extravagant.
"What if I fail?"
"Then you learn something and try again. That's what normal people get to do."
I completed the inquiry form that evening, slowly and awkwardly, with dictation software helping when my fingers cramped.
Meanwhile, Sophie had begun visiting her father's home again under a safety plan agreed by Mara and Luca. She arrived with her red kite drawing and a list of questions she'd written with her therapist. Luca read the list carefully before answering.
"Why did Vanessa want me to go away?" Sophie asked.
"Adults were trying to get control of things that weren't theirs," he said. "They used you because they thought it would be easier than asking you what you wanted."
"Did she hate me?"
Luca took a moment. "I don't know what's in her heart. I know her actions were wrong."
"Can I still like the birthday bracelet she bought me?"
"Of course. Liking a gift doesn't mean you approve of what someone did."
Sophie nodded, then crossed another question from her list. Her next one was harder.
"Did you really say something about a girl leaving your house?"
"I did," Luca admitted. "Two years ago, I was talking about a young employee who had been threatened. I wanted dangerous men removed and the employee protected. Someone cut my words apart and made them sound different."
Sophie looked at him. "So the recording wasn't all made-up sounds?"
"The sounds were real. The message was false."
She considered this. "That's sneakier than lying with a fake voice."
"It is."
"Maybe people should listen to the whole sentence."
Luca smiled sadly. "They should. I should have done that with a lot of things."
The two of them spent the afternoon building a miniature bridge from craft sticks. Luca's hands were much too large for the delicate pieces, and Sophie delighted in correcting him. Their laughter floated down the hall where Mara waited, reading a book. She had not forgiven Luca for his blind trust in Vanessa, but she could see that he was finally listening to their daughter instead of assuming he already knew what she needed.
Three days later, the police found Elliott Price. He had been staying in a motel outside Milwaukee under his own name. His attorney arranged an interview after investigators contacted him. Elliott admitted producing manipulated audio for a client but claimed he had been told it was for a private theatrical performance.
"You labeled a file CUSTODY EDIT THREE," Chen said. "What kind of theater requires that?"
Elliott looked at his attorney. After a long conference, he agreed to provide the original project files and discuss the people who paid him. His cooperation was not a guarantee of leniency, but he appeared to understand that the records would speak even if he refused.
His laptop contained a schedule for the engagement dinner. At 9:30 p.m., Vanessa would activate the device beneath the carving board. The guests would hear Luca apparently renounce Sophie. A separate recording, cleaned for distribution, would be emailed to Mara within an hour. Celeste Wynn's packet would then present emergency placement as a solution to the supposed family crisis.
"They intended to make the scandal public first," Chen told Luca. "They assumed both parents would panic."
"And they expected Mara to surrender Sophie?"
"The plan included threats against her job and housing, plus misleading documents about child-protection proceedings. They weren't relying on the recording alone."
That answered the question I'd carried since the music room. It also made the scheme uglier. Vanessa had planned to destroy trust between two parents, frighten a child, and exploit the confusion to obtain legal-looking control of an inheritance.
Elliott identified one man who attended the recording sessions but refused to give his full name. He described a tall man in a charcoal coat who wore a crest ring and demanded that the audio sound "emotionally convincing." The man had approved the final script and authorized a substantial additional payment.
"Was it Dominic Moretti?" Chen asked.
Elliott shifted. "I never heard the surname."
The investigators left the question open and compared surveillance footage from the music-room corridor with the recording schedule. The images showed Vanessa, Elliott, and a third person entering at 2:04 p.m. The third person wore a charcoal coat. His face was concealed by the angle of the camera, but a gold ring flashed when he touched the doorknob.
At my apartment, a letter arrived from the community college. It contained course information, a possible scholarship application, and the name of a disability services adviser who could discuss temporary accommodations while my hands healed. I held the paper against my chest, trying not to get it caught against the dressings.
For the first time, I had evidence of a future that wasn't organized around Vanessa's threats.
Then Detective Ortiz called. "Grace, I need you to think carefully. In the music room, did you hear anyone say the words 'the other voice'?"
I closed my eyes. I remembered the man tapping the keyboard, Vanessa pacing, and a phrase I'd nearly forgotten.
"She said, 'If Luca won't cooperate, use the other voice.' I thought she meant another recording."
"Did she say whose voice?"
"No."
Ortiz was quiet for a moment. "We recovered a second audio project. It isn't Luca's voice."
"Whose is it?"
"Mara Ellis's."
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The files contained a fabricated confession that Sophie's mother had abandoned her voluntarily.
Vanessa had prepared to turn whichever parent resisted into the villain.
