Chapter 3 - Caroline's Final Message|
The dining room held its collective breath as Luca broke the brittle wax seal.
Ava stepped closer to her father, resting her small hand against his sleeve.
Luca carefully unfolded the yellowed paper, his hands remarkably steady despite the storm raging in his eyes.
For nearly two full minutes, he read in total, suffocating silence.
As his eyes moved down the handwritten lines, the color slowly drained from his face, replaced by an expression of murderous fury.
Vanessa tried to laugh, but the sound died in her throat like a strangled bird.
"Luca, whatever she wrote in her final days was influenced by her illness," Vanessa murmured frantically.
"Caroline was paranoid toward the end."
"She wasn't seeing things clearly, and you know how unstable she became."
Luca slowly lowered the paper and looked at his fiancée.
"Caroline wasn't ill when she wrote this, Vanessa."
"She wrote this three weeks before her car went off the bridge on Lake Shore Drive."
A collective gasp rippled through the seated guests.
Caroline Moretti’s fatal car accident had shaken the city four years ago, leaving Luca a grieving widower and Ava motherless.
"Listen to what my wife wrote," Luca said, his voice cutting through the stillness like a blade.
He held the paper toward the chandelier light and began reading aloud.
"'My dearest Luca, if you are reading this, it means I am no longer there to protect our little girl.'"
"'I have hidden this note where only Ava’s innocent love could preserve it, on the saddle of the gentlest creature we own.'"
"'If you are preparing to marry again, you must investigate the ledger kept in the Bellini family estate in Lake Forest.'"
"'Vanessa did not enter your life by accident or fate.'"
"'She was paid two million dollars by the Castiglione family to secure your trust and place their bloodline in control of the Moretti shipping docks.'"
Luca stopped reading and looked up, his gaze fixing upon Vanessa's frozen face.
The red-gowned woman looked as though all the air had been violently sucked from her lungs.
"'And worst of all, Luca,'" he continued, his voice trembling with suppressed rage, "'she was the last person who had access to the master brake cylinders of my town car the night of the charity gala.'"
The dining hall erupted into frantic, horrified murmurs.
Several older men in the back stood up from their chairs in shock.
Vanessa backed away from the table, her chair scraping loudly against the polished marble floor.
"That's a lie!" she screamed, her polished facade completely crumbling.
"Caroline was losing her mind because you were always working!"
"She made that up to keep you from ever moving on without her!"
Luca folded the paper with chilling precision and slipped it into his breast pocket.
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"Caroline never lied to me in ten years of marriage," he said quietly.
"And you have been lying to me since the first night you walked through my front door."
