Chapter 5 - THE SECRET BENEATH THE GALA|
Dante had spent fifteen years believing his father died in an accident.
The official report said that Marco Ferrara’s car had gone through a barrier near the East River after midnight. The vehicle was recovered. His father’s body was never found, but a damaged watch and a bloodstained coat had been identified as belonging to him.
Dante had been seventeen when his uncle, Salvatore Ferrara, took control of the family’s businesses.
He had been told that his father’s death was tragic, unavoidable, and best left alone.
Now his mother claimed she had seen his father alive after the crash.
Dante called his private investigator, Elias Grant, and ordered him to retrieve every surviving document connected to the accident.
Then he went downstairs to find Sofia.
She was helping Eleanor sort photographs and handwritten recipes.
“Did she say anything else?” Dante asked.
Sofia shook her head.
“She became upset. I didn’t want to push her.”
“You did the right thing.”
He looked at the photograph.
“My uncle said my father was driving alone that night.”
“Your mother remembers a car.”
“She remembers fragments. Sometimes she confuses dates and names.”
“Sometimes people who are frightened remember things in pieces.”
Dante studied her.
“You sound certain.”
“I spent a year helping my mother after her surgery. Doctors explained that memory can be complicated. Being confused about one thing doesn’t mean every memory is false.”
He absorbed that without argument.
Eleanor looked up from the photographs.
“Dante, don’t let them take the blue box.”
“What blue box?”
She frowned, struggling to find the words.
“The one under the music.”
Then she returned to the photographs as if the conversation had never happened.
Dante immediately ordered a search of the townhouse. The staff found nothing beneath the piano, inside the bench, or behind the framed sheet music.
Sofia noticed a small scratch on the floor near the piano’s rear leg.
“Has this been moved recently?”
Dante crouched beside her.
“Not that I know of.”
Together, they examined the wooden panel beneath the piano. It looked like an ordinary decorative strip, but Sofia noticed that one end was slightly loose.
A hidden compartment opened behind it.
Inside sat a narrow blue metal box.
Dante’s face hardened.
He lifted the box onto a table and opened it with a key found taped beneath the lid. Inside were several old photographs, a small digital recorder, and a bundle of documents tied with faded ribbon.
The top document bore his father’s signature.
It was a list of payments made to shell companies connected to the Ferrara shipping business.
Sofia leaned closer.
“These aren’t ordinary expenses.”
“No.”
She pointed to a repeated account number.
“The same number appears beside three different company names. Either someone made a mistake, or they wanted the money to look as though it came from different places.”
Dante examined the page.
His father had spent months documenting financial irregularities before he died.
One photograph showed Marco standing beside Senator Leonard Graff. Another showed Salvatore Ferrara shaking hands with a man whose face had been partially obscured.
Dante recognized the man’s watch.
It belonged to Vivienne Sterling’s husband, Richard.
“Your father was investigating them,” Sofia said.
“Or working with them.”
“Would he have hidden evidence inside your mother’s piano if he were working with them?”
Dante had no answer.
He picked up the digital recorder. Its battery was dead, but the device appeared intact.
“Get this to Elias,” he ordered.
Then he turned to Sofia.
“You’re not staying here alone tonight.”
Her expression immediately closed.
“I can decide where I stay.”
“You can. But someone may be watching this house.”
“Then tell me what you know and let me decide.”
Dante held her gaze, struggling against the instinct to issue an order.
Finally, he nodded.
“There’s a guest apartment in the rear building. You may use it if you want. It has a separate entrance, and you can leave whenever you choose.”
Sofia considered the offer.
“Does your mother know about the box?”
“She found it before we did.”
“Then perhaps she remembers more than anyone has allowed her to explain.”
Dante looked at the documents again.
For years, he had assumed the people who controlled his family’s fortune were protecting his father’s legacy.
Now he was beginning to suspect they had built their power on his father’s disappearance.
And the woman who had uncovered the first clue was the same woman who had nearly lost her job defending his mother.
Dante closed the blue box.
“Whatever happens next,” he said, “we find out the truth.”
Sofia nodded.
“Even if it hurts your family?”
May you like
His answer came without hesitation.
“Especially then.”
