Chapter 9 - THE THIRD CAR
Dante found the traffic footage by morning.
Not from Hudson Ridge.
That camera had mysteriously failed.
But a gas station five miles away had kept old digital backups as part of an insurance lawsuit.
At 11:09 p.m., Sofia’s silver Mercedes passed the station.
At 11:11, Marcus’s black Jaguar followed.
At 11:12, a black Cadillac Escalade appeared.
Raffaele stared at the screen.
“Plate?”
“Unreadable.”
“Driver?”
“Tinted windows.”
“Who owned a black Escalade back then?”
Dante hesitated.
“Your mother.”
Raffaele turned.
“My mother?”
Isabella Moretti.
Family matriarch.
Cold.
Elegant.
Unforgiving.
Dead six years.
Raffaele stared at the video again.
Celeste had gone white.
“Mom knew?”
Raffaele looked at her.
“Knew what?”
Celeste shook her head.
“She knew about the money.”
Raffaele’s stomach sank.
“How?”
“She found one of the transfers.”
“When?”
“Two weeks before Sofia died.”
Raffaele paced away.
“So our mother knew you were stealing from me.”
“She said she would handle it.”
“And what did that mean?”
Celeste’s voice broke.
“You know Mom.”
Yes.
He did.
Isabella believed the Moretti name mattered more than almost anything.
Scandal was weakness.
Weakness attracted enemies.
And family betrayal was handled inside the family.
Raffaele picked up Sofia’s photograph.
“Did Sofia speak to my mother?”
Celeste nodded.
“The afternoon before she died.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know.”
Dante said, “Maybe we can find out.”
Raffaele looked at him.
“How?”
“Your mother recorded almost every business meeting in her study.”
Raffaele frowned.
“They were destroyed when she died.”
“Not all of them.”
Dante disappeared downstairs.
Twenty minutes later he returned with a hard drive retrieved from an old family safe.
Hundreds of audio files.
Most labeled by date.
They found October eighteenth.
Raffaele clicked.
His mother’s voice filled the office.
“Sofia, sit down.”
Then Sofia.
“I don’t want tea, Isabella.”
“You’re angry.”
“Your daughter stole from my husband.”
Celeste covered her face.
Isabella remained calm.
“Celeste made a mistake.”
“A forty-million-dollar mistake.”
“Raffaele doesn’t need to know everything.”
Raffaele’s jaw tightened.
Sofia answered instantly.
“Yes. He does.”
“He will destroy his sister.”
“No. Celeste did that herself.”
Silence.
Then Isabella spoke.
“If you tell him, this family will never be the same.”
Sofia’s answer came without hesitation.
“Then maybe it shouldn’t be.”
The recording stopped.
Raffaele stared at the speaker.
Dante frowned.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
Raffaele pointed.
The audio file was forty-two minutes long.
Only four had played.
Dante restarted it.
Static.
Then Isabella’s voice returned.
But this time another man was in the room.
A voice Raffaele recognized immediately.
“Mrs. Moretti, if you want this cleaned up, it needs to happen tonight.”
Raffaele’s blood ran cold.
He turned toward Dante.
They both knew that voice.
It belonged to Victor Salerno.
May you like
Raffaele’s father’s oldest friend.
And Lucy’s godfather.
