Chapter 3 - THE NAMES MATTEO WARNED US ABOUT
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The police found a man lying beside Dario's abandoned getaway car.
For one horrible moment, I thought another member of the Moretti family had been murdered.
But Detective Reyes returned to the ballroom with unexpected news.
The man was alive.
His name was Patrick Kline.
He was a mechanic who had occasionally serviced vehicles at the Moretti estate.
Someone had struck him across the head and left him unconscious near the gate.
Inside the getaway car, officers discovered a spare tuxedo, two prepaid phones, and a leather briefcase containing thousands of dollars.
Dario had vanished.
Patrick was rushed to the hospital before anyone could question him.
Luca listened without speaking.
Then he looked at me.
“Claire, do you remember Patrick?”
I nodded.
“He worked in the garage last year.”
“Was he there the afternoon Dario brought Matteo's car in?”
I hesitated.
“I don't remember seeing him, sir.”
Detective Reyes wrote something in her notebook.
“We'll find out.”
By midnight, the wedding guests were gone.
The champagne had been cleared away.
The flowers were wilting.
And a woman who had entered the ballroom as Luca Moretti's bride was now sitting in a private room with a police officer outside the door.
Vanessa kept insisting she had done nothing wrong.
But she wouldn't explain why Sofia's signature appeared on documents Sofia had never seen.
At one in the morning, Luca's attorney arrived.
Her name was Evelyn Park.
She wore a dark business suit and carried a leather briefcase that looked older than I was.
I'd met her several times when she visited the mansion.
She was one of the few people who could tell Luca Moretti he was making a mistake without becoming frightened.
After studying the documents, she removed her glasses.
“Luca, these aren't ordinary marriage papers.”
“Then what are they?”
“A proposed amendment to the family holding company's voting arrangements.”
She placed three pages on the dining room table.
“The first names Dario as your successor in certain circumstances.”
“The second gives a company connected to Vanessa access to substantial financial interests.”
“And the third appears to surrender Sofia's inherited voting rights.”
Sofia stared at her.
“Matteo left me shares in the company.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said gently.
“And those shares cannot simply be taken away because someone wants them.”
Luca leaned forward.
“Can they enforce these documents?”
“Not if we establish the signatures were forged or obtained through fraud.”
She looked toward Sofia.
“I'll file for emergency relief first thing in the morning.”
Sofia nodded.
Then she pointed to the last page.
“There's something wrong with my name.”
Evelyn studied the document.
“What do you mean?”
“My legal name is Sofia Rivera.”
Silence settled over the table.
Sofia touched the signature.
“I used Moretti socially after I married Matteo.”
“But I never legally changed my surname.”
I saw the understanding spread across Luca's face.
Someone had forged a signature without knowing the name Sofia actually used on legal documents.
Evelyn immediately photographed the page.
“That could be extremely important.”
Then Luca pointed toward another name.
“Who is Vanessa E. Vale?”
Evelyn opened her laptop.
After several minutes, her expression changed.
“Vanessa Bellini previously used the surname Vale in business filings.”
Luca frowned.
“She told me Bellini was her family name.”
“It is a family name,” Evelyn replied.
“But she didn't tell you about her connection to Vale Holdings.”
“What connection?”
Evelyn turned the computer toward us.
A photograph appeared.
It showed Vanessa standing outside a luxury office building in downtown Chicago.
Beside her stood Dario Moretti.
Both were smiling.
The picture had been taken nearly three years earlier.
Long before Vanessa supposedly met Luca at a charity gala.
Sofia covered her mouth.
“She knew Dario before she knew Luca.”
Evelyn nodded.
“And Vale Holdings received money from companies associated with the Moretti business.”
Luca stared at the photograph.
“Vanessa told me she'd never met Dario until I introduced them.”
Nobody answered.
The lie spoke for itself.
I remembered the first time Vanessa had entered the mansion.
She'd carried a beautiful designer handbag and called me sweetheart.
Two days later, she'd accused me of stealing a bracelet she'd misplaced.
When Luca found the bracelet inside her dressing room, she'd laughed and called it a misunderstanding.
I had accepted her apology because I needed my job.
Now I wondered how many warnings I'd ignored.
“Claire.”
Luca's voice brought me back.
“Did Dario ever ask you to sign anything?”
I thought carefully.
“Only delivery receipts, sir.”
“What kind?”
“Flowers, cleaning supplies, catering invoices, things like that.”
Evelyn studied another page.
“Would you mind looking at this?”
She turned a document toward me.
At the bottom, beneath the words Witness to Delivery, was my signature.
Claire Bennett.
My heart stopped.
“I didn't sign this.”
“Are you sure?”
I stared at the handwriting.
The looping C was mine.
So was the unusual way I crossed the two t's in Bennett.
But I had never seen that document before.
“They copied my signature,” I whispered.
Evelyn looked grim.
“From something you signed legitimately, perhaps.”
Luca stood so suddenly his chair scraped against the floor.
“They used my housemaid as a false witness.”
I felt tears burning behind my eyes.
All those years of work.
All those nights scrubbing floors and serving dinners.
And now my name was attached to a conspiracy involving murder and millions of dollars.
“I swear I didn't know,” I whispered.
Luca walked around the table.
“I know you didn't.”
But Detective Reyes didn't look away from the papers.
She was a good detective.
Good detectives didn't believe something simply because a powerful man said it.
“Claire,” she asked carefully.
“Can you prove where you were when this was supposedly signed?”
I looked at the timestamp.
9:05 a.m.
The morning of the wedding.
I remembered carrying flowers into the ballroom.
Then I remembered something even more important.
“There are security cameras outside the service entrance.”
Reyes immediately called for the footage.
Twenty minutes later, Graham Beck returned with an uncomfortable expression.
“Detective, that camera wasn't recording this morning.”
Luca stared at him.
“Why not?”
Graham swallowed.
“We had a technical problem.”
Reyes slowly closed her notebook.
“That's the second technical problem tonight, Mr. Beck.”
Graham said nothing.
Then Sofia spoke.
“Luca, I think Matteo knew.”
We all turned toward her.
“He told me once that the greatest danger wasn't someone breaking into our house.”
Her eyes filled.
“He said it was someone who already had a key.”
And that was when I remembered the afternoon before Matteo died.
Dario hadn't been the only person I saw near the garage.
There had been someone else.
Someone wearing an expensive cream-colored coat.
Someone with blonde hair.
May you like
Someone who had turned away the moment she noticed me watching.
Vanessa.
