Chapter 4 - The Witness Nobody Believed
By midnight, the engagement party had become a crime scene.
Marcus had cleared the ballroom and ordered the staff to preserve everything Vanessa had touched. The guests had been asked to leave their contact information, and Luca's private attorney was on his way.
I should have gone home.
Instead, I remained in the sitting room, listening as Luca and Joe tried to reconstruct a night neither of them had ever truly escaped.
“Your mother kept a small journal,” Joe said. “She wrote in it every day. Sometimes it was only a sentence about the weather or what she planned to cook. Other times, she wrote about your father.”
Luca rubbed his jaw.
“I've never seen it.”
“Because your aunt gave me the journal the morning after the funeral.”
Luca stared at him.
“My aunt had it?”
“She gave it to me in a brown envelope. She said Catherine had asked her to deliver it if anything happened.”
“Where is it?”
Joe looked ashamed.
“I lost it.”
Luca's face hardened.
“What do you mean, you lost it?”
“I didn't lose it carelessly. Someone broke into my apartment while I was in the hospital. They took the envelope, my photographs, and the letters I had written to you.”
Joe's hands trembled.
“I thought I had failed your mother a second time.”
Luca rose and paced toward the fireplace.
“Why didn't you tell the police?”
“I did. They searched my apartment and found nothing. Then a detective told me I should be grateful nobody charged me with stealing from the Moretti family.”
Luca stopped walking.
“Who was that detective?”
“Frank Delaney.”
The name hung in the air.
Marcus made a note on his phone.
“I'll find his old case files.”
“Start with the fire report,” Luca ordered. “I want every photograph, every witness statement, every document that was sealed or altered.”
Marcus nodded and left.
Joe watched him go.
“You've become a powerful man, Anthony.”
“I became a powerful man because I thought power meant nobody could take anything from me again.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I was wrong.”
I had never heard Luca speak so honestly. His usual confidence was gone, replaced by something raw and unfamiliar.
I moved toward the small table and poured Joe another cup of tea.
He thanked me with a gentle smile.
“You have a kind heart, Emma.”
I looked away.
“I'm not sure that's always a good thing.”
“It is when it gives you the courage to do what's right.”
Luca glanced at me.
“Why did you bring him inside when Vanessa threatened your job?”
I hesitated.
“Because he needed help.”
“That simple?”
I thought of my mother counting coins at the kitchen table. Of Daniel hiding his overdue tuition notice beneath a textbook. Of all the times I had watched people turn away from someone in need because helping them might be inconvenient.
“Yes,” I answered. “That simple.”
For a moment, Luca said nothing.
Then he nodded once, as if he had made a decision.
“You won't lose your job over tonight.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And if Vanessa contacts you, don't meet her alone.”
My stomach tightened.
“Do you think she'll come after me?”
“I think she has spent years protecting a secret. People do unpredictable things when they believe a secret is about to destroy them.”
He didn't say it to frighten me.
That made it worse.
At one in the morning, Joe finally fell asleep in a guest suite. Luca refused to leave the hallway until the doctor confirmed the old man's condition was stable.
I was carrying a fresh blanket upstairs when I heard Luca speaking on the phone in his office.
“Find Delaney,” he said. “I don't care if he's retired, living on a boat, or hiding in another country. I want to know where he is.”
He paused.
“No. Nobody threatens him. Nobody touches him. I want the truth, not another reason for people to lie.”
I continued down the hallway, trying not to listen.
A few minutes later, Marcus called.
They had located Frank Delaney.
He was living in a small house outside Milwaukee, and according to a former colleague, he had been suffering from memory problems for several years.
Luca wanted to leave immediately.
Joe, however, insisted on going with him.
“You've just spent hours in the cold,” Luca protested. “You're not traveling anywhere tonight.”
“I've spent thirty-three years waiting for this.”
“And I spent thirty-three years thinking you abandoned me. I can wait until morning.”
Joe looked at him.
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled.
“You still have your mother's stubbornness.”
Luca's expression softened.
“I'm told I inherited the worst parts of both my parents.”
“No,” Joe said. “You inherited their strength. What you do with it is your choice.”
The next morning, Luca arranged for a doctor to examine Joe again. When the doctor approved a short trip, Luca sent a car and two security men to accompany us.
I was surprised when he asked me to come.
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because you were the only person in this house who listened to him before you knew who he was.”
I glanced at Joe, who was already sitting in the car with his lunchbox on his lap.
“I don't know anything about investigations.”
“You don't need to. Just keep asking the questions everyone else is too afraid to ask.”
The journey took nearly two hours.
Delaney's house stood at the end of a quiet street lined with bare trees. The paint was peeling from the porch railings, and a faded American flag hung beside the front door.
A woman in her sixties answered when we knocked.
She looked at Luca and immediately went pale.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“I'm looking for Frank Delaney.”
“He's resting.”
Joe stepped forward.
“Please tell him Joseph Miller is here.”
The woman stared at Joe.
Then she covered her mouth.
“Oh, my God.”
“You know me?” Joe asked.
She nodded slowly.
“My father talked about you before he died. He said you were the only witness who refused to change his story.”
She opened the door.
Inside, an elderly man sat beside a window in a wheelchair. His hair was white, his shoulders narrow beneath a wool sweater. A stack of old newspapers lay beside him.
When he saw Joe, his hands began to shake.
“Joseph?”
Joe moved closer.
“Hello, Frank.”
Delaney closed his eyes.
“I wondered when this day would come.”
Luca stepped forward.
“You investigated my mother's death.”
Delaney looked at him for a long time.
“Yes.”
“Was it an accident?”
The old detective's eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
Luca went completely still.
Delaney looked toward his daughter, who quietly left the room.
“I was young,” he said. “I thought I could fix it later. I thought if I followed the orders of men more powerful than me, I could protect my family until I found a way to make things right.”
“What orders?” Luca demanded.
Delaney swallowed.
“Salvatore Bellini told me your mother had been involved in something dangerous. He said the fire was an unfortunate accident and that I should close the case before it became a public scandal.”
“My mother was murdered?”
“I believe she was killed deliberately. But I never proved who started the fire.”
Joe leaned forward.
“What about the journal?”
Delaney's eyes widened.
“You know about the journal?”
Luca moved closer.
“Where is it?”
Delaney looked toward an old wooden cabinet.
“I kept one copy of a statement your mother gave me three days before she died. I hid it because I was afraid Bellini would destroy it.”
He reached into a drawer and produced a sealed envelope.
The paper had yellowed with age. Across the front, in Catherine Moretti's handwriting, were the words:
For my son, if I cannot tell him myself.
Luca took the envelope with trembling hands.
For a long moment, he couldn't open it.
Then he broke the seal.
The first sentence made him sit down.
Anthony, if you're reading this, it means someone has finally found the courage to tell you what happened to our family.
He read silently for several seconds.
Then his eyes lifted to Joe.
“My mother knew she was in danger.”
Joe nodded sadly.
“She tried to warn people.”
Luca looked back at the letter.
And as he continued reading, the blood drained from his face.
May you like
Because the person his mother feared most was not the man who had threatened her.
It was someone she had once trusted with her life.
