Chapter 20 - What We Choose
Vincent stared at the page.
“I didn’t make those transfers.”
Hale nodded. “We know.”
Vincent looked up sharply.
“Then why show me?”
“Because the access code could only be generated from one device.”
“My office terminal.”
“No,” Sofia said softly. “Your old phone.”
Vincent remembered the phone he had lost the week Sofia vanished. Bellamy had told him it was probably stolen at a restaurant.
Hale turned the page.
A photograph was clipped to the ledger.
Charles Bellamy holding Vincent’s phone in a parking garage.
Beside him stood Isabella.
Vincent felt nothing at first. Then too much.
At dawn, back at the estate, Isabella sat across from him in the library with a federal agent outside the door.
“I gave Charles the phone,” she admitted. “Three years ago.”
“You knew me then?”
“Not personally.”
She looked exhausted.
“My father owed Rocco money. Charles told me if I stole the phone, the debt disappeared. I did it. Later, when I learned what they used it for, I tried to get close enough to fix it.”
“So you got close to me.”
“Yes.”
“Was any of it real?”
Isabella’s eyes filled.
“Enough to make leaving harder than staying.”
Vincent looked away.
She was charged with theft and conspiracy but received consideration for cooperating. Charles Bellamy faced federal racketeering, kidnapping, fraud, and attempted murder charges. Rocco survived to stand trial. Michael survived too, though Dominic told him their relationship would have to be rebuilt one honest day at a time.
The Moretti trust was frozen, audited, and eventually broken apart. Vincent sold the companies tied to old criminal networks and kept only the businesses that could survive daylight.
It cost him money.
It cost him power.
It also let him sleep.
Sofia did not move back into the mansion.
That surprised everyone except Vincent.
Three years could not be erased by one kiss in a burning tunnel.
They rented a small house near the river for Sofia and Nico. Vincent came for breakfast. Then dinner. Then weekends. Sometimes Sofia let him stay late enough to wash dishes. Sometimes she told him to go home.
They fought about old lies, new boundaries, his temper, her secrecy, and whether a two-year-old needed four toy trucks that made siren noises.
They also laughed.
That mattered.
Grace stopped working as a housekeeper. Vincent funded a catering company in her name, but only after she made him sign a contract saying it was an investment, not charity.
Emily became famous inside the family for three things: finding hidden phones, asking dangerous questions, and refusing to be impressed by expensive rooms.
Six months later, Vincent invited everyone to the Moretti estate for a small dinner.
No white roses.
Emily noticed immediately.
“Good,” she said.
Vincent smiled. “I was told they don’t belong in winter.”
Across the room, Sofia heard him.
She looked surprised.
Then she smiled too.
After dinner, Vincent found her alone in the ballroom where everything had started. The old signing table was gone. So were the portraits of men who had built the family name through fear.
Sofia stood by the windows looking at the river.
“You changed the room,” she said.
“I changed a lot of things.”
“That doesn’t mean I forgot.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
She turned toward him.
Vincent held out a small velvet box.
Sofia stared at it. “You have terrible timing.”
“It’s not a ring.”
She opened it.
Inside was the silver pendant with the two leaves and blue center, repaired and cleaned. The hidden compartment remained.
Sofia touched it carefully.
“I thought evidence had it.”
“They released it.”
She looked at him. “Why give it to me?”
“Because it was always yours.”
From the hallway, Emily shouted, “Don’t sign anything!”
Sofia burst out laughing.
Vincent laughed with her.
Then Nico ran into the ballroom carrying a blue crayon and a piece of paper.
“Daddy, sign!”
Vincent looked at Sofia.
She raised an eyebrow.
“What does it say?”
Nico held up the paper.
It was a crooked drawing of four people holding hands under a giant yellow sun.
At the top, in Emily’s handwriting, were the words:
OUR FAMILY. NO SECRETS.
Vincent took the crayon.
This time, nobody told him to stop.
May you like
He signed his name.
And Sofia signed beside him.
