Chapter 10
For a few seconds, she simply stared.
Perhaps she had expected Adrian Moretti, son of Lorenzo Moretti, to take control the moment something valuable appeared.
Perhaps part of me had expected the same.
But Thomas’s letter had changed the room.
He had spent his final weeks trying to ensure his wife would someday have answers.
Those answers belonged to her first.
We left the bank just before noon.
In the car, Claire looked lighter.
Not happy exactly.
Grief didn’t vanish because a mystery was solved.
But for four years she had carried the possibility that Thomas had become tangled in something dangerous.
Now she knew the truth.
He had been chasing paperwork.
History.
A promise his grandfather trusted him to preserve.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
Claire looked confused.
“Back to the estate.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’ve spent four years moving because Victor Kane kept finding you.”
“Yes.”
“And today you learned why.”
“Yes.”
“So where do you want to go?”
She looked out the window.
“I don’t understand.”
“For lunch.”
Her head turned back.
“Lunch?”
“People still eat lunch, apparently. Lily explained meals to me yesterday.”
Daniel laughed from the front seat.
Claire smiled.
“Somewhere ordinary.”
“That may be difficult for him,” Daniel said.
“Drive.”
We ended up in a small Italian restaurant near the lake.
No reservation.
No private room.
No one cared who I was.
Claire ordered soup.
I ordered pasta.
For forty minutes we didn’t discuss Victor, warehouses, ledgers, or my father.
She told me Thomas had proposed to her at a miniature golf course after losing by eleven strokes.
I told her my mother once threw an entire dinner party out of the dining room because my father insulted the violinist she had hired.
Claire laughed so hard she nearly spilled her water.
It had been years since I’d eaten a meal that accomplished nothing.
No agreement.
No negotiation.
No transaction.
I found I liked it.
That afternoon, however, Daniel received a call.
His expression changed as he listened.
When he hung up, he looked at me.
“We have a problem.”
Claire stiffened.
“What?”
“Victor Kane is at the estate.”
I felt the old instinct rise.
Control.
Contain.
Confront.
Then I saw Claire’s face.
Not terrified.
Tired.
She had spent years allowing Victor’s appearance to determine where she lived, where Lily slept, what name went on a mailbox.
I wasn’t going to make another decision for her.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
She blinked.
“Me?”
“He came because of you.”
She thought for a long moment.
Then she said, “I want to go home.”
The word caught me unexpectedly.
Home.
She meant my estate.
I nodded.
“All right.”
Victor was waiting in the library when we arrived.
Security had taken his phone and kept him under observation.
He stood when Claire entered.
For the first time since I had known Victor Kane, he looked uncertain.
“Claire.”
She stopped several feet away.
“Why did you come?”
“I need to explain.”
“You had four years.”
Victor glanced at me.
“This is a private matter.”
“No,” Claire said.
Her voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
“I spent four years treating it like one. That was my mistake.”
Victor studied her.
“You found the box.”
Not a question.
Claire’s expression answered him.
Victor sat down.
Something like defeat crossed his face.
“I never wanted to frighten you.”
“You repeatedly found us after we moved.”
“I wanted Thomas’s records.”
“You mentioned my daughter’s daycare.”
His eyes dropped.
“That was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“I believed Thomas had taken documents that could destroy a project thousands of people are depending on.”
“And that justified following us?”
“No.”
Victor looked older in that moment.
Not harmless.
Not redeemed.
Simply human enough to recognize an answer he should have reached years earlier.
“I handled it badly,” he said.
I leaned against the desk.
“That is an ambitious understatement.”
He looked at me.
“Your father knew everything.”
“So I’ve gathered.”
“Lorenzo agreed the old Vale arrangements should stay buried.”
“Apparently he changed his mind.”
Victor frowned.
“What are you talking about?”
I watched him carefully.
“You don’t know about the trust.”
“What trust?”
His confusion looked genuine.
Claire and I exchanged a glance.
Victor truly didn’t know.
Daniel handed him a photocopy of the addendum.
Victor read it.
Then read it again.
He sat very still.
“Arthur signed this?”
“Yes.”
“I never saw it.”
“Apparently several people didn’t.”
Victor rubbed his forehead.
“You don’t understand what this means.”
“I understand exactly what it means.”
“No. You understand what it meant forty years ago.”
He looked up.
“If that trust is still valid, it doesn’t just affect your property.”
“Whose else?”
Victor hesitated.
Then said the last name I expected to hear.
“Your mother’s.”
The room went silent.
“My mother had nothing to do with Bennett Street.”
Victor looked toward the old photograph I had brought from my father’s office.
“She did after Samuel Bennett died.”
I stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“There was another agreement.”
“What agreement?”
Victor’s face had gone pale.
“Lorenzo never told you?”
“No.”
Victor slowly shook his head.
“Then before you make any decision about those warehouses, Adrian, you need to find out why Elena Moretti secretly became trustee of the Bennett workers’ fund three months before she died.”
Claire looked at me.
I couldn’t speak.
My mother had been gone for fifteen years.
In every memory I had of her, Elena Moretti existed far away from my father’s business world.
She played piano.
Funded libraries.
Remembered every employee’s birthday.
Despised meetings.
And according to Victor Kane, three months before her death, she had quietly accepted responsibility for a trust nobody had mentioned to me.
Daniel broke the silence.
“Where would those records be?”
Victor looked at me.
“You already have them.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Where?”
His answer was almost a whisper.
“In the one place Lorenzo could never bring himself to enter after she died.”
And I knew instantly what he meant.
My mother’s music room.
May you like
The doors had been locked for fifteen years.
I still had the key.
