CHAP 2 — LUCIA CROFT
Carlo Marchetti had died seven years earlier in a private hospital room overlooking Lake Michigan.
Officially, it had been cardiac failure.
Unofficially, half of Chicago believed someone had helped him reach the grave.
Enzo had never believed either version completely.
His father had been seventy-one, diabetic, stubborn, and still capable of working fourteen hours a day. The evening before he died, Carlo had summoned Enzo to the hospital and spent forty minutes asking questions about trusts, land deeds, and a storage company the family had sold years earlier.
Then, near midnight, Carlo had awakened from sedation.
He had grabbed Enzo’s wrist.
“Lucia Croft,” he had whispered.
Enzo had assumed it was the confused memory of a dying man.
By morning, Carlo was dead.
Now Lucia Croft’s daughter stood inside his library.
“What happened to your mother?” Enzo asked.
Adeline looked at the fire.
“She died when I was nine.”
“How?”
“Apartment fire.”
Enzo waited.
“You don’t believe it was an accident.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because three days before she died, she mailed me a letter.”
Adeline pulled a folded photograph from the pocket of her uniform.
It showed a young woman standing outside an office building beside Carlo Marchetti.
Lucia Croft had dark hair, serious eyes, and a leather bookkeeping case tucked under one arm.
On the back, in faded ink, were six words.
If anything happens, remember the numbers.
Below them were four groups of digits.
Enzo took the photograph.
“These are account numbers?”
“I thought so.”
“You’ve checked?”
“For years.”
“And?”
“They don’t correspond to any bank I could find.”
Enzo studied the numbers.
Then he noticed something.
“They’re not bank accounts.”
Adeline looked at him.
“What are they?”
“Property indexes.”
He walked to a cabinet, unlocked it, and removed an old leather binder.
The Marchetti family had accumulated real estate for decades.
Restaurants.
Warehouses.
Office towers.
Parking structures.
Pieces of riverfront land purchased before the neighborhoods around them became fashionable.
Enzo flipped through handwritten records.
Then stopped.
The first number matched a parcel once owned by Marchetti Storage Company.
The second belonged to an abandoned printing warehouse.
The third had been a private medical records facility.
The fourth—
Enzo stared.
“What?”
He turned the binder toward her.
The final number corresponded to a property called Ashford Municipal Holdings.
Adeline felt her stomach tighten.
“Camilla’s family?”
“Her grandfather’s company.”
The room became quiet.
Enzo reached for the phone.
He called Sofia Rinaldi.
She arrived twenty-six minutes later wearing a charcoal suit beneath a camel coat, her dark hair pinned back and irritation visible in her eyes.
Sofia had been the Marchetti family’s attorney for fourteen years.
She was one of the few people in Chicago who spoke to Enzo as though his last name meant nothing.
She listened without interrupting.
Then she examined the photograph.
“Do the Ashfords know about this?”
“I don’t know,” Adeline said.
“Who else knows you have it?”
“No one.”
Sofia looked directly at her.
“That answer is almost certainly wrong.”
Adeline frowned.
“If you found your way into this house using your real name, anyone who cared enough to look could connect you to Lucia Croft.”
Enzo leaned back.
“Meaning Pike may not have been here only for me.”
Sofia nodded.
“Maybe he wasn’t.”
Adeline went pale.
A knock sounded at the library door.
Gabriel entered carrying a sealed evidence bag.
Inside was a broken whiskey glass recovered from a service station after Adeline had taken it from Camilla.
“The lab rushed it.”
Enzo stood.
“And?”
“Digitalis.”
Sofia’s expression changed.
Enough digitalis could trigger a fatal arrhythmia.
Enzo stared at the glass.
“So someone tried to kill me.”
Gabriel shook his head.
“That’s the strange part.”
“What?”
“The concentration was low.”
“Meaning?”
“According to the toxicologist, it probably wouldn’t have killed you.”
Adeline frowned.
“What would it do?”
“Dizziness. Irregular heartbeat. Collapse. Maybe hospitalization.”
Sofia slowly looked toward Enzo.
“Not an assassination.”
“A medical emergency,” Enzo said.
“During your engagement celebration.”
Silence.
Adeline understood first.
“If he collapsed tonight…”
Sofia finished the thought.
“Who would be at his side?”
Everyone looked toward the empty space where Camilla had stood.
Enzo’s jaw tightened.
“What happens legally if I become incapacitated after marrying her?”
Sofia’s face became grave.
“Under the proposed marital trust?”
“Yes.”
“Camilla would gain temporary voting authority over several holding companies.”
Adeline looked between them.
“Several?”
Sofia gave her a humorless smile.
“Several worth approximately one point eight billion dollars.”
The attempted poisoning had not been designed to kill Enzo.
It had been designed to make him helpless.
And someone had prepared the legal paperwork in advance.
Sofia opened her briefcase.
“Enzo.”
“What?”
“There’s something you need to see.”
She removed a document.
The engagement trust.
She opened to the signature page.
Enzo stared at it.
His signature appeared at the bottom.
He had never signed it.
Someone had forged his name.
But that was not what made him stop breathing for a second.
The witness signature beneath it belonged to the one person Enzo trusted more than almost anyone alive.
Marco Marchetti.
His father’s younger brother.
His uncle.
His consigliere.
The man who had taught Enzo how to drive.
May you like
How to negotiate.
How to bury his father.
