Chapter 19 - Page Forty-Seven
I read page forty-seven three times.
A warehouse fire twelve years earlier.
Insurance fraud.
A payoff to a city inspector.
My authorization code.
I remembered the deal. I had been twenty-nine, desperate to prove I could handle the family business. My father told me the building was empty. I signed the transfer and didn't ask questions.
A night watchman had been injured.
Frank paid him to disappear.
I had never known.
But I had chosen not to know.
There was a difference, and it wasn't flattering.
Luca sat across from me. "What are you going to do?"
I looked through the study doors.
Ethan and Lily were awake now, building a crooked tower out of gift boxes. Sophia watched them while drinking coffee from both hands.
For years I had told myself I was cleaning up the Moretti name.
Maybe I had.
But cleaning a house while refusing to open one locked room was still pretending.
"I'm giving Quinn everything."
Luca stared at me. "Everything?"
"Everything."
"You could lose companies. Contracts. Maybe face charges."
"I know."
"The board will panic."
"They'll survive."
"And Ethan?"
That was the only question that mattered.
I looked at my son.
"He'll know what his father did. And what his father did next."
Sophia walked into the study after Luca left.
"You look terrible," she said.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
She placed Elena's letter on the desk.
"I should've given this to you years ago."
"You were scared."
"That's not an excuse."
"No. It's a reason."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"What happens now?"
"Frank goes to prison. Harris probably does too. Sloan cooperates. Arthur testifies. Quinn gets the ledger."
"And you?"
I looked down at page forty-seven.
"I stop pretending my hands were clean just because other people's were dirtier."
Sophia reached across the desk and covered my hand with hers.
It was the gentlest thing anyone had done to me all night.
Then Ethan screamed from the ballroom.
I was on my feet before the sound finished.
We ran in.
He stood beside the birthday table, staring at a new cake the kitchen had brought out.
Lily stood between him and the cake with both arms spread.
"Nobody eats anything," she announced, "until I check it."
For the first time in twelve hours, I laughed so hard I cried.
But the next morning, Detective Quinn called with one final piece of evidence.
May you like
Elena had recorded a message for Ethan.
And she had left one for me too.
