Chapter 5 - The Voice of a Dead Woman|
The cassette player made a sharp clicking sound before the recording began.
We were sitting in Luca's private office at the Moretti mansion.
Frank had fallen asleep in a guest bedroom after a doctor examined him and confirmed he needed rest.
Marco, Luca's accountant, stood beside the desk with my mother's notebook open in front of him.
Nobody spoke.
A faint hiss filled the room.
Then a woman's voice emerged from the old tape.
“Ruth, if you're hearing this, I need you to know I wasn't imagining things.”
Luca gripped the arms of his chair.
I recognized the voice from old family videos Frank sometimes watched on Elena's birthday.
It was his mother.
“Elena,” Luca whispered.
The recording continued.
“Anthony Bellini has been taking money from families on Taylor Street for years.”
“When they refuse to pay, something happens to their businesses.”
“A kitchen catches fire.”
“A delivery truck disappears.”
“A building suddenly fails an inspection.”
The woman paused.
I could hear a door closing somewhere in the background.
Then Elena spoke again.
“I found the payment records.”
“Anthony is moving the money through Hawthorne Properties.”
“And someone inside the city is helping him.”
Marco looked up sharply.
Luca raised one hand, signaling him to remain silent.
Elena's voice became quieter.
“I gave copies to Daniel Price because he promised to take them to an investigator.”
“But Daniel hasn't returned my calls.”
“Yesterday, Anthony came to the restaurant and told me I was putting my son in danger.”
Luca's face drained of color.
On the tape, Elena began crying.
“I don't care what he does to me.”
“But Luca is only nine years old.”
“Please, Ruth, if something happens, keep him safe.”
A long silence followed.
Then we heard a man's voice.
It was distant, but unmistakably angry.
“You should have left those papers alone, Elena.”
Luca leaned forward.
Elena answered.
“Get out of my restaurant, Anthony.”
“You think your husband can protect you?”
“I'm going to the police.”
The man laughed.
“Then you'd better make sure you get there.”
The recording ended.
For nearly a minute, nobody moved.
Luca stared at the cassette player.
I had never seen such pain in another person's eyes.
He had spent twenty-eight years believing his mother died in a tragic accident.
Now he had heard her voice describing a direct threat shortly before her death.
I wanted to say something comforting.
But there are moments when words are too small for what a person has lost.
So I simply sat beside him.
Finally, Luca spoke.
“I remember that night.”
His voice sounded different.
Smaller.
“I was supposed to be asleep.”
“But Mom came into my room and kissed my forehead.”
“She told me to be kind to people who couldn't defend themselves.”
He looked toward the window.
“I thought she was just saying goodnight.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“She loved you.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
Then his expression hardened.
“But someone made sure she never got to tell me again.”
Marco cleared his throat.
“Boss, I've been checking the companies listed in Ruth's notebook.”
He turned his laptop toward us.
“Hawthorne Properties was dissolved years ago, but several related companies remained active.”
“One of them has a financial relationship with Bellini Development Holdings.”
I leaned forward.
“Vanessa's company?”
“Yes.”
Marco pointed at a series of transactions.
“The two hundred thousand dollars Luca transferred for the wedding went into an account controlled by Vanessa.”
“She then used most of it as part of the purchase funding for the old restaurant building.”
Luca stared at the screen.
“And the rest?”
Marco hesitated.
“I'm still tracing it.”
Suddenly, his phone vibrated.
He looked at the message and frowned.
“There's something else.”
“The wedding planner just sent me the original invoice history.”
“Frank paid the sixty-eight thousand dollars himself.”
The old man had sold Elena's ring for a fraction of that amount and withdrawn much of his savings to cover the balance.
My eyes filled with tears again.
He hadn't merely sacrificed a piece of jewelry.
He had sacrificed almost everything he had saved for his remaining years.
Luca slowly closed his eyes.
Then he turned toward me.
“Claire, I need to ask you something.”
I nodded.
“Whatever it is.”
“Do you want to stop?”
I looked at my mother's notebook.
For six years, I had believed her death had ended our story.
Now I realized she'd left me a chance to finish something she had been too frightened to complete.
“No,” I answered.
“I want to know the truth.”
Luca nodded.
“Then we'll find Daniel Price.”
At that moment, my phone vibrated.
An image appeared from an unknown number.
It showed the front door of my apartment.
Someone had taken the photograph only minutes earlier.
May you like
Underneath were six words.
“Your mother should have stayed quiet.”
