Chapter 7 - THE MAN LUCA TRUSTED MOST|
When Daniel told me my name was on Vanessa's list, I thought I had reached the end of what I could endure.
I was wrong.
The detective asked Daniel why Vanessa considered me a threat.
He explained that I had once overheard a conversation at the mansion without realizing its importance.
I remembered the evening immediately.
It had happened almost three years earlier.
Vanessa was still a business associate visiting the Moretti family.
I had entered the library to collect coffee cups.
Vanessa was arguing with a man on the phone.
I heard her say, "The foundation money cannot go through the regular accounts."
Then she noticed me and ended the call.
She smiled.
I apologized for interrupting.
And the next day, she gave me a beautiful silk scarf as a gift.
I had thought she was being kind.
Now I understood she had been testing whether I suspected anything.
"Why didn't she get rid of me?" I asked Daniel.
"Because you were useful."
"How?"
"She knew you worked close to Luca and Olivia."
"She thought I could convince you to tell me things about the household."
I felt sick.
"Did you ever ask me to spy on them?"
He lowered his eyes.
"Before I disappeared, yes."
Suddenly, I remembered innocent conversations Daniel used to initiate over dinner.
He asked what Luca was building.
Whether Olivia attended board meetings.
Who controlled the family foundation.
I had answered because I believed I was talking to my husband.
I had unknowingly given Vanessa information.
I left the police station with a headache that felt like broken glass behind my eyes.
Luca was waiting beside his car.
He didn't ask what Daniel had said.
He simply opened the passenger door.
"Olivia wants to see you."
I nodded.
We drove through Chicago in silence.
Snow clouds hung low above the city, and the November wind pushed dry leaves across the streets.
When we arrived at the mansion, Olivia was waiting in the sunroom.
She was wearing a soft blue sweater.
Her physical therapist, Dr. Emily Harper, had just finished a morning session.
I could see exhaustion on her face.
But she smiled when I entered.
"Claire."
I hurried toward her.
"I'm so sorry."
She looked confused.
"For what?"
"For Daniel."
"For what he did."
"For everything."
Olivia reached for my hand.
"Claire, you didn't drive that car."
"But I was married to him."
"That doesn't make his choices yours."
I began crying.
She pulled me into an embrace.
We stayed that way until I could breathe again.
Then Luca entered with Detective Torres.
"We need to discuss Marco," he said.
My stomach tightened.
Marco DeLuca had been taken in for questioning.
At first, he denied knowing anything about the damaged brakes.
But investigators had found a payment made to a company connected with him shortly before Olivia's accident.
It was sixty thousand dollars.
The money came from an account controlled by Graham Ward.
Faced with the financial records, Marco admitted that he had allowed an outside mechanic into the mansion's garage.
He claimed Vanessa told him Olivia's vehicle needed urgent maintenance.
But he had accepted money to keep the visit out of the security log.
"Why?" Olivia whispered.
Luca's face twisted with anger.
"Marco had gambling debts."
She closed her eyes.
"Another man who wanted money more than my life."
Nobody answered.
Torres continued.
"Marco says he didn't know the mechanic intended to damage the brakes."
"Whether that's true is something we'll investigate."
"What happened after the accident?" I asked.
"He suspected the visit was connected."
"Vanessa pressured him to keep quiet."
"And he did."
Luca walked toward the window.
I watched his reflection in the glass.
For years, people had described him as the most powerful man in Chicago's criminal underworld.
He had bodyguards, money, influence, and enough enemies to fill a prison.
Yet he hadn't protected the person who mattered most.
His own sister.
"Olivia," he said quietly.
She looked up.
"I should have known."
"No, Luca."
"I should have asked harder questions."
"You believed the doctors."
"And I believed the people I paid to protect you."
Olivia wheeled herself toward him.
"Then stop blaming yourself and help me finish this."
He turned.
She held out her hand.
"I don't want revenge."
"I want the truth."
Luca took her hand.
"You'll have it."
But the situation was becoming more dangerous.
That afternoon, Vanessa's attorney announced that she would not answer further questions without legal representation.
The police had not yet established enough evidence to arrest her for the crash.
She left the mansion and went to a penthouse owned by her father.
By evening, her representatives were telling reporters that Olivia's accusations resulted from trauma and unreliable memories.
An anonymous account began posting old photographs of Olivia in the hospital.
The captions suggested she was emotionally unstable.
One post even claimed I had manipulated her to obtain money from Luca.
I stared at the photographs on my phone.
Someone had turned Olivia's suffering into entertainment.
"How could she?" I whispered.
Olivia looked over my shoulder.
Then she did something unexpected.
She took the phone from my hands.
"She wants people to think I'm helpless."
Her expression changed.
"Let's give them something else to see."
She opened her laptop and found the original architectural drawings for Harbor House, a rehabilitation and accessible-housing project she had designed before the accident.
"These are the plans she wanted me to abandon," Olivia said.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to show everyone what she was trying to steal."
Then her phone lit up.
A new message had arrived from an unknown number.
You survived the highway.
Let's see how you survive the truth.
Attached was a photograph of Olivia outside her rehabilitation clinic.
May you like
The photograph had been taken less than an hour earlier.
Someone was watching her again.
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