Chapter 7 - THE DEAD MAN AT THE WINDOW|
The man's name was Samuel Vale.
He had been Clara's godfather, her father's closest friend, and the last person she remembered standing beside her mother's hospital bed before everything changed.
According to the family story, Samuel had died in a warehouse fire twelve years earlier.
The body had never been recovered.
Clara had been too young to understand why her mother cried whenever someone mentioned him.
Now the security footage showed him alive.
Dominic watched her reaction carefully.
"Are you certain?"
"Yes."
"Could someone be imitating him?"
"No one else walks like that."
Dominic instructed Matteo to trace the maintenance uniform and identify every vehicle that had entered the property that evening.
Clara sat in the temporary guesthouse while the estate's damaged wing was sealed. She felt as if the foundations of her life had shifted beneath her feet.
Her father had hidden a family tree.
Her mother had concealed a workshop.
Her godfather had apparently survived a fire that everyone believed had killed him.
And someone was willing to burn an entire house to keep those secrets buried.
Dominic entered carrying two cups of tea.
"I thought you might need something warm."
Clara accepted one.
"Thank you."
He sat opposite her.
"You don't have to solve everything tonight."
"That's what everyone keeps telling me."
"Because you're trying to carry every secret yourself."
She looked at him.
"Someone has to."
"No. We can carry them together."
The words were simple, but Clara felt something inside her loosen.
For six months, she had believed marriage meant enduring an arrangement without expecting tenderness. Dominic had never asked her to share his burdens, and she had never imagined he might willingly share hers.
"Why did you marry me?" she asked.
He looked down at his tea.
"Because your father owed money, and I believed I could protect you by making the arrangement official."
"That explains why you offered. It doesn't explain why you chose me."
Dominic was quiet for a long time.
"Your father once saved my life."
Clara stared.
"When?"
"I was seventeen. I was attacked outside a warehouse after a meeting went wrong. Your father pulled me into his shop and hid me beneath a cutting table while armed men searched the street."
"Why didn't he tell me?"
"He made me promise never to use what happened as leverage against you."
Dominic's voice softened.
"When your father's debts came due, I remembered the promise. I thought marrying you would keep the creditors away."
"And you never considered that I might want more than safety?"
"No."
He did not try to excuse himself.
"That was my failure."
Clara looked away, afraid of how much she wanted to believe him.
Matteo returned with new information.
Samuel had been seen entering a private medical clinic three weeks earlier under an assumed name. The clinic was owned by a charitable foundation connected to the Moretti family.
Dominic's expression hardened.
"Beatrice."
"Maybe," Clara said. "But I don't think she knows everything."
"Why?"
"Because she treats me like an inconvenience. If she knew what my father left behind, she'd be afraid of me."
A knock sounded at the door.
A guard entered carrying a small package wrapped in brown paper.
"No return address, boss."
Dominic opened it carefully.
Inside was a black silk glove and a handwritten note.
Clara recognized the handwriting.
It belonged to Samuel.
Ask your husband what happened the night Isabella disappeared.
Dominic went utterly still.
Clara turned toward him.
"Who is Isabella?"
He looked at the note as though it had become a weapon.
"My grandmother."
"And what happened to her?"
Dominic's voice dropped.
"According to my father, she died giving birth to a child who never survived."
Clara held up the family tree.
"The child wasn't dead."
Outside, a car engine started.
By the time Matteo reached the gate, the vehicle was gone.
But its passenger had left something beneath the windshield wiper of Dominic's car.
A photograph of a young woman holding a baby.
May you like
On the back were two words.
YOUR HEIR.
