Chapter 7
Lucy remembered the box.
Not the file.
The box.
A wooden one with brass corners.
Vittorio showed her photographs of several archive containers.
She pointed to one immediately.
“That.”
It belonged to Antonio Romano.
Daniel retrieved the inventory list.
The box should have contained old personal correspondence and shipping records from 1998 through 2001.
It was missing.
“So Dominic took it.”
Rachel shook her head.
“We know someone took it. We don’t know who has it now.”
Vittorio looked toward Marcus, who remained under guard in another room.
“Marcus gave it to Dominic.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Evidence, Vittorio.”
He hated the word.
Because it required patience.
Rachel continued.
“We know Dominic entered the property. We know Marcus reset cameras. We know Lucy saw Marcus with the box. We know she later ended up locked in the garden. That’s enough to investigate. It isn’t enough to invent the missing minutes.”
Vittorio understood.
He did not like it.
Emma provided another piece.
After finding Lucy at six, she had taken the child through the service entrance.
Bianca saw them.
“She got angry immediately.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked why I had gone outside.”
“Not whether Lucy was okay?”
“No.”
Vittorio stared at Emma.
“What happened next?”
“Bianca told Lucy to go upstairs.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
Lucy refused to leave Emma.
Bianca then told Emma she was encouraging bad behavior.
Marcus arrived.
He looked at Lucy’s clothes.
Then at Emma.
“He asked whether Lucy had said anything.”
Vittorio’s jaw tightened.
“What did you answer?”
“I said no.”
“Had she?”
Emma nodded.
“What?”
“She kept saying, ‘Grandpa’s box.’”
Vittorio felt something move inside him.
Lucy called Antonio “Grandpa” from photographs.
She had never met him.
Marcus must have told her whose box it was.
Or she recognized the photograph pasted on the lid.
Emma continued.
“Marcus told Bianca they needed to handle it before breakfast.”
Rachel looked up.
“Exact words?”
“As close as I remember.”
That was the first time the breakfast scene became connected directly to the missing archive box.
Not legally.
Not completely.
But logically.
Bianca’s cruelty had served a purpose.
Make Lucy afraid.
Make Lucy appear disobedient.
Make everyone interpret anything she said afterward as another childish story.
That afternoon Michael Grant arrived with an old accounting ledger from Antonio’s era.
Inside were repeated payments to Moretti Import Services.
Not lawsuits.
Payments.
For almost two years after the companies supposedly became enemies.
“Why would Antonio pay Dominic after taking his contracts?” Vittorio asked.
Michael shook his head.
“No explanation.”
Some amounts were small.
Others were enormous.
One entry had a handwritten note.
SETTLEMENT — D.M. — PERSONAL.
Vittorio stared at it.
May you like
The story he had inherited about his father and Dominic Moretti was incomplete.
Whatever lay inside the missing box might explain why.
