Chapter 4 - The Discovery in the StudyBy mid-week, the Moretti penthouse felt alive again for the first time in three years.
The heavy black curtains in the living areas were opened wide, letting in the golden autumn sunlight that illuminated the manicured balconies overlooking Lake Michigan. The floorboards echoed with the soft sound of acoustic music, fresh pastries baking in the kitchen, and the silver laughter of four-year-old Mia and Bella.
The twins made a full, miraculous transformation.
Their fevers were gone, their screaming fits ceased completely, and they no longer feared the dark. They spent their mornings painting bright yellow sunflowers in the sunlit conservatory with me and their afternoons eating homemade cinnamon oats in the kitchen.
Dante was no longer the cold, distant Don who locked himself in dark offices for eighteen hours a day.
He was home every afternoon by four o'clock, sitting on the rug in the nursery playing wooden blocks with the twins, watching me with a depth of quiet, reverent joy that made my heart race.
One rainy afternoon, while the twins were taking their nap, I walked into Dante’s private study to return a book on Sicilian history I had borrowed from his shelves.
Behind his broad mahogany desk sat a locked drawer that had been left slightly ajar.
Inside lay an old, tarnished silver pocket watch engraved with the initials I.V.M.—Isabella Vance Moretti.
Beside the watch sat a sealed leather folder marked: THE CAR BOMB INVESTIGATION — UNREDACTED.
My hand trembled as I pulled the folder from the drawer, opening the thick parchment pages.
Inside were forensic reports, wiretaps, and crime scene photographs from three years ago.
Printed across the final summary page was the name of the man who had paid two million dollars to place the bomb under Isabella’s vehicle:
Arthur Vance—Isabella’s estranged uncle and senior trustee of the Vance European Shipping Assets.
My breath caught in my throat.
Arthur wasn't just Isabella's uncle. He was my father's older brother—the wealthy, aristocratic patriarch who had disowned my side of the family thirty years ago when my grandmother moved to Chicago.
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He had murdered Isabella to seize her sixty-percent voting proxy over the Vance shipping fleets in Palermo.
And now, with my sudden arrival at the Moretti penthouse, Arthur Vance’s intelligence team had just flagged my name in the Chicago public records.
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