Chapter 20 - The Hidden Ledger
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Dominic’s leather portfolio slipped from his fingers and hit the flagstones. Marin gasped, both of them rushing across the terrace to kneel on either side of Isabella’s wheelchair.
Isabella Varelli sat gripping the arms of her chair, her chest rising and falling rapidly, tears shining in her dark eyes as her vocal cords fought through five years of neural paralysis now that the cumulative toxins were finally gone from her system.
"Mama?" Dominic whispered, his voice breaking as he took her hands in his. "Don't strain yourself—I’m right here."
Isabella shook her head fiercely. She didn't want to rest. With trembling determination, she pulled the acrylic letter board onto her lap and looked past Dominic toward the mansion doors to make sure not even the household staff were within earshot.
Then, with a strength she hadn't possessed since the night of her stroke five years ago—the same night Dominic’s father and older brother, Matteo, had supposedly died in a boat explosion off Block Island—Isabella began spelling out a message on the board faster than Marin had ever seen her move.
V - I - V - I - E - N - D - I - D - N - O - T - S - T - A - R - T - T - H - E - T - E - A.
Dominic’s blood ran cold as Marin whispered the words aloud.
"Vivien didn't start the poison?" Dominic asked, his eyes narrowing in shock. "Mama, Dr. Mercer said you were being dosed for the last month."
Isabella tapped the board once—No—and held up five fingers on her right hand.
Five years.
Someone had been giving her trace amounts of the paralytic compound ever since her original stroke five years ago, intentionally keeping her mute so she could never tell Dominic what she had witnessed the night his father and brother died. Vivien had simply inherited the method and increased the dose when she grew impatient for the inheritance.
Isabella’s finger moved across the letters again, her hand shaking with urgency.
V - A - U - L - T - P - I - E - R - 4.
M - A - T - T - E - O - A - L - I - V - E.
Dominic stared at the board, the roar of the Atlantic surf suddenly sounding miles away. Before he could speak a single word, his encrypted phone buzzed inside his pocket.
He pulled it out. It was an automated security alert from the biometric vault beneath Varelli Pier 4—a subterranean bunker that had not been opened since the night of the boat explosion five years ago.
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On the screen, a live thermal camera feed showed a tall man with a scar across his jaw standing inside the vault door, using an overriding retinal scan that belonged to only one person on earth: Dominic’s older brother, Matteo.
And standing right beside Matteo in the vault camera frame, holding a briefcase bearing the crest of Crestline Harbor Holdings, was Marin’s supposedly deceased ex-husband—Eli’s father.
