Chapter 10
Elena’s final audio file began at 10:31 p.m.
Inside her car.
Rain struck the windshield.
Her voice trembled.
“If this saves, I want Domenico to know I called Camilla.”
Domenico stopped the recording.
Rachel waited.
He started again.
Elena said she had pulled over because the black sedan had appeared behind her.
She recognized it.
She called Camilla.
Camilla insisted Marco was home.
Then Elena said:
“I don't believe her anymore.”
Rain.
Breathing.
Then:
“I’m going to drive back toward the main road.”
The recording continued for twelve minutes.
Elena described seeing headlights behind her again.
She accelerated.
The sound of the engine rose.
Then tires.
A sharp breath.
The file cut.
That part established fear.
It did not establish who caused the crash.
But a second file began automatically three minutes later.
A damaged fragment.
At first there was only static.
Then Elena coughing.
A car door opening.
Footsteps.
Marco’s voice.
“Elena?”
Domenico stopped breathing.
Elena made a sound.
She was alive.
Marco said:
“Oh, God.”
Then Elena whispered:
“Call.”
Marco moved closer.
She repeated it.
“Call 911.”
A long silence.
Then Marco said:
“Where’s your phone?”
Movement.
Elena whispered:
“Please.”
The recording ended.
Investigators reconstructed what happened afterward using Marco’s eventual admission.
He found Elena alive.
He reached into the damaged car.
But instead of immediately calling emergency services, he saw her phone on the floor.
He knew it contained photographs, recordings and messages documenting his foundation fraud.
He took it.
He tried unlocking it.
He spent several minutes deleting what he could.
Only then did another vehicle approach.
Marco panicked and left.
The passing motorist called 911.
Marco had not caused Elena’s car to leave the road.
No evidence supported that.
The major betrayal was different.
Elena survived the crash long enough to ask him for help.
Marco chose protecting himself first.
Camilla’s silence afterward protected that choice.
And Domenico learned something even worse from the medical review.
No doctor could say with certainty that an ambulance called five or seven minutes earlier would have saved Elena.
But nobody could say it would not have.
May you like
Marco had stolen from Domenico before Elena died.
After the crash, he may have stolen her only remaining chance.
