Chapter 6 - Blood Does Not Lie
The DNA test took three days.
Vincent offered to have it expedited privately.
I refused.
I wanted an independent laboratory.
No Moretti doctors.
No DeMarco lawyers.
No favors.
Mara Sloan arranged the chain of custody.
When the result arrived, she brought the envelope herself.
I opened it in Eleanor Price’s office.
Vincent sat across from me.
Eleanor remained by the window.
The report used words like kinship coefficient and probability of relationship.
I skipped them.
Then found the sentence that mattered.
The tested relationship is strongly consistent with biological uncle and niece.
Probability:
99.98 percent.
I stared at it for a long time.
Vincent didn’t say anything.
That helped.
Finally I pushed the paper across the desk.
“So.”
“So.”
“You’re my uncle.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
He looked nothing like the twelve-year-old boy in my mother’s photograph anymore.
That boy had smiled easily.
Vincent did not.
“What happened to you?”
One eyebrow moved.
“That’s a large question.”
“I have time.”
“No, you don’t.”
Eleanor turned.
“Neither of you do.”
She placed a legal notice on the desk.
An emergency meeting of Belladonna Holdings’ board had been scheduled.
Someone was challenging my claim.
“Who?”
Eleanor’s expression was grim.
“Renato Moretti.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“On what grounds?”
“That Elena died before Nora’s birth.”
I frowned.
“That makes no sense.”
“It doesn’t need to make sense initially.”
Eleanor tapped the papers.
“It needs to create enough uncertainty for a court to temporarily freeze your voting rights.”
“Can he?”
“He can try.”
“Why would he care?”
Vincent answered.
“Because if your claim fails, control reverts to the secondary family trust.”
“And who controls that?”
“My uncle Renato.”
There it was.
The number again.
Fifty-one percent.
I laughed.
Eleanor stared at me.
“I apologize,” I said.
“I worked double shifts for eleven years because my mother’s medical debt followed us after she died.”
My laughter turned bitter.
“I skipped meals to make rent.”
Vincent looked away.
“And somewhere, people were killing each other over money supposedly belonging to me.”
Eleanor’s voice softened.
“It isn’t just money.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s voting control.”
“That is money wearing a necktie.”
Vincent smiled despite himself.
Then Eleanor placed another folder down.
“Your grandmother designed the trust for a reason.”
“What reason?”
“She wanted to stop the men in her family from destroying it.”
Inside were letters written by Vittoria.
One addressed to Elena.
One to Vincent.
One to any future grandchild.
The final letter contained a sentence I read three times.
If you inherit this, do not mistake ownership for obligation.
I liked my grandmother.
I wished I had known her.
Then Marco called Vincent.
He stepped into the hallway.
When he returned, his face had changed.
“What?”
“We identified the person who rented the vehicle used by Vivian’s mystery driver.”
“Renato?”
“No.”
“Who?”
“Luca Santoro.”
Eleanor went still.
I had seen Luca twice.
He was Vincent’s closest adviser.
Fifty-two.
Elegant.
Soft-spoken.
He had stood behind Vincent when he caught the riding crop.
One of the four men in black.
“That’s impossible,” Vincent said.
Marco didn’t answer.
Vincent stared at him.
“You verified it?”
“Three times.”
“Where is Luca?”
“Missing.”
The office suddenly felt colder.
I remembered the four men in the ballroom.
One had whispered Jesus Christ when I said Elena Rossi.
Luca.
“He recognized my mother’s name.”
Vincent looked at me.
“What?”
“Back at the party.”
I could see the moment again.
Luca’s face.
The whisper.
He had not been shocked because he learned something.
He had been shocked because something he already knew had returned.
Eleanor gathered the papers.
“We need to secure the trust.”
Vincent stood.
“I need to find Luca.”
I stood too.
“You need to stop treating those as two different problems.”
He looked at me.
For perhaps the first time, not like an employee.
Not like a mystery.
Like family.
“You really are Elena’s daughter.”
I folded the DNA report.
“I’ll decide whether that’s a compliment later.”
That afternoon, Eleanor showed me the current valuation of Belladonna Holdings.
I stared at the number.
Then counted the zeros.
Twice.
I felt nothing.
No joy.
No excitement.
Just exhaustion.
“Does Vincent own forty-nine percent of this?”
“Yes.”
“And I own fifty-one?”
“Once your claim is confirmed.”
“Meaning I can overrule him?”
“In many matters.”
I thought of the quiet man catching a riding crop in midair.
Interesting.
Eleanor slid another document toward me.
“There is one more clause.”
I read it.
Then again.
My stomach tightened.
“If Elena’s descendant is found…”
Eleanor nodded.
“…the controlling beneficiary gains authority to remove the sitting chairman.”
“Vincent.”
“Yes.”
I looked through the glass wall.
My uncle was outside talking to Marco.
A man I had met three days earlier.
A man whose empire I might legally control.
A man whose closest adviser had apparently betrayed him.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
One photograph.
Luca Santoro sitting in a café.
Taken that morning.
Across from him sat an older man whose face I recognized from the Moretti family album.
Renato.
May you like
The message beneath it contained five words.
YOUR UNCLE TRUSTED THE WRONG MAN.
