Chapter 9 - The Room His Father Locked.
The convoy returned to the Duca estate shortly before noon.
The mansion looked unchanged.
That made Lorenzo distrust it more.
Guards remained at every entrance.
The gate logs showed no vehicle registered to Victor or Celeste.
The cameras showed no obvious breach.
Yet Lorenzo no longer believed absence on a screen meant absence in reality.
"Carlo's study is in the west wing?" Matteo asked.
Lorenzo nodded.
"Third floor."
"Why seal it?"
"Because after he died, everyone wanted something from it."
Documents.
Photographs.
Letters.
His father's watch.
His father's chair.
His father's approval, if anyone had found a way to steal that from a dead man.
Lorenzo had locked the room and refused everyone.
Even himself.
For eleven years, he had entered only twice.
The last time had been after his mother's funeral.
Serena walked beside him up the staircase.
"What could Victor want there?"
"I don't know."
"That's not reassuring."
"It isn't supposed to be."
Elena and Mia were taken to a secure guest suite with guards Lorenzo personally selected.
Mia protested by pointing repeatedly toward Lorenzo.
Elena crouched in front of her.
"We stay here."
Mia shook her head.
"You already saved him once tonight."
The girl's eyes remained on Lorenzo.
He knelt beside her.
"I'll come back."
Mia studied him.
Then she touched her ear.
Lorenzo understood.
"I'm listening."
She nodded.
The west wing smelled faintly of dust and cedar.
Lorenzo's father had loved cedar.
Every drawer in his study had been lined with it.
The memory arrived unexpectedly.
Carlo sitting behind the desk when Lorenzo was twelve.
Carlo telling him that a man's reputation was a bank account everyone else made withdrawals from.
Carlo saying trust should be expensive.
Carlo eventually trusting no one.
Lorenzo stopped at the study door.
The brass lock appeared intact.
He inserted his key.
The door opened.
The room was not intact.
Desk drawers had been pulled out.
Books were scattered across the carpet.
A painting had been removed from the wall.
The safe behind it stood open.
Matteo swore under his breath.
Marco immediately checked the windows.
One was unlocked.
A maintenance ledge ran beneath it toward a narrow service staircase.
"That's how they got in," Marco said.
Lorenzo walked to the safe.
He had emptied most of it after his father's death.
One item had remained because he could never decide what to do with it.
A sealed black envelope addressed in Carlo's handwriting.
FOR LORENZO IF THE ROMANO AGREEMENT IS EVER REVIVED.
The envelope was gone.
Serena read the label beneath the empty shelf.
"Romano agreement?"
"Our families discussed a merger when I was twenty-six."
Salvatore, who had entered behind them, stopped.
"Your father refused."
Lorenzo turned.
"Why?"
Salvatore looked at the open safe.
"He never told me."
"Try again."
"We negotiated for six months."
"And?"
"Carlo suddenly accused Victor of manipulating the trust terms."
The room seemed to narrow.
"Victor drafted them?"
"Yes."
"The same Victor who drafted section nine?"
Salvatore's face darkened.
"Yes."
Lorenzo looked at his father's desk.
A memory moved through him.
Carlo shouting in the library.
Carlo insisting someone had changed a contract after he signed it.
Everyone had called it paranoia.
Lorenzo included.
He had spent eleven years believing his father's mind had betrayed him.
Now he wondered whether his father had been the only person in the room telling the truth.
"He wasn't imagining it," Lorenzo said.
Salvatore lowered his eyes.
"Maybe not."
The words ignited something in Lorenzo.
"Maybe?"
He stepped toward Salvatore.
"Your brother was altering agreements eleven years ago."
"I did not know that."
"My father told everyone."
"Your father told everyone many things."
"And you all decided the easiest explanation was that he was losing his mind."
Salvatore's face hardened.
"Do not put that entirely on us."
"Why not?"
"Because you believed it too."
The sentence stopped Lorenzo.
It was cruel.
It was also true.
Serena watched him carefully.
"Lorenzo."
He held up a hand.
He needed silence.
Not because his ears hurt.
Because memory did.
Marco searched the overturned desk.
"Boss."
Lorenzo looked over.
Marco had found a small cassette recorder taped beneath the lowest drawer.
Old.
Dusty.
Carlo had distrusted digital devices near the end.
Lorenzo remembered mocking him for it.
Marco pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then Carlo Duca's voice emerged.
Older than Lorenzo remembered.
Tired.
But clear.
"If you're hearing this, Lorenzo, then I was right to leave it where no lawyer would look."
Lorenzo gripped the edge of the desk.
No one else moved.
Carlo continued.
"Victor Romano changed the partnership agreement after I signed the preliminary draft."
Salvatore closed his eyes.
"He denied it."
Carlo's recorded voice went on.
"I found proof, but by then I had made the mistake of telling Victor I had it."
A pause.
"After that, people around me began saying I was confused."
Lorenzo's chest tightened.
"Doctors told me I was exhausted."
Another pause.
"Perhaps I was."
"But exhausted men can still recognize their own signature."
Serena looked at Lorenzo.
He could not look at her.
Carlo's voice became quieter.
"There is a second ledger."
Marco leaned closer to the recorder.
"Victor kept records of every trust he altered and every payment he made."
"I hid the location in the black envelope."
"If you ever consider joining our family to theirs, read it first."
The tape clicked off.
No one spoke.
Lorenzo stared at the empty safe.
Victor now had the envelope.
Which meant Victor now knew where the ledger was.
Matteo walked toward the window.
"Any idea where your father hid it?"
"No."
Salvatore looked toward the recorder.
"Victor will destroy it."
"If he only wanted to destroy it, he would have come years ago."
Lorenzo's voice had become calm again.
Serena understood first.
"He needs the ledger for something."
"Leverage," Lorenzo said.
Salvatore stared at him.
Then his face changed.
"Against me."
Lorenzo nodded.
"Against everyone."
His phone rang.
Unknown number again.
This time, Lorenzo answered immediately.
Victor's voice came through without distortion.
"You finally opened your father's room."
Lorenzo looked at the window.
"Where are you?"
"Close enough."
"You have the envelope."
"I have what Carlo should have given me eleven years ago."
"And what do you want now?"
Victor laughed softly.
"Not what you think."
"Then surprise me."
"Bring Serena to the old Duca chapel at six tonight."
Serena's face drained of color.
"No guards."
Lorenzo looked at Marco.
Victor continued.
"No brother."
Salvatore's jaw tightened.
"No cousin."
Matteo muttered something under his breath.
"Just you and my niece."
"Why Serena?"
A pause.
"Because she still doesn't know what her father did to her mother."
The line went dead.
Serena stared at her father.
May you like
Salvatore looked as if someone had struck him.
And for the first time since the conspiracy began, Lorenzo realized Victor's plan might not have started with him at all.
