Chapter 7 - The Final Enemy Was Inside Our Home
For a while, everything was peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Adrian’s trial continued.
The Moretti organization was being dismantled and rebuilt under legal ownership.
Dante spent more time at home.
I returned to work slowly.
Eli grew.
His first smile made Dante forget an entire business meeting.
His first laugh made everyone in the house stop what they were doing.
Then one afternoon, Miriam called.
“Emma, sit down.”
I did.
“What happened?”
“We found another account.”
“Adrian’s?”
“No.”
My stomach dropped.
“Then whose?”
“Dante’s.”
I froze.
“What?”
“It was opened before your wedding.”
“For what?”
“Unknown.”
She sent the documents.
The account had received one large transfer every year.
For ten years.
The beneficiary was listed as...
Isabella Moretti.
Dante’s mother.
I confronted him that night.
He looked at the documents.
“I knew about the account.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to reopen an old case.”
“What old case?”
He stared at me.
“My mother was kidnapped twenty years ago.”
I felt cold.
“What?”
“She was taken by people working for my father’s enemies.”
“Then how did she survive?”
“She escaped.”
“But you said she had been in hiding.”
“She was.”
“What does the account have to do with her?”
Dante sat down.
“My father paid for her disappearance.”
“So the money was protection?”
“Yes.”
I exhaled.
Then I noticed something.
One transfer date matched the year my father disappeared from Chicago.
I looked at Dante.
“What happened to my father?”
He went still.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why do these dates match?”
He stared at the papers.
For the first time, he looked genuinely confused.
We called Miriam.
She arrived within the hour.
Her team traced the account.
The money had not gone to Isabella.
It had gone to an unknown intermediary.
A name appeared.
Gabriel Hart.
My father.
I could barely breathe.
“He’s alive?”
No one answered.
Then a message arrived.
Unknown number.
“You were never supposed to find him.”
I read it twice.
Dante took the phone.
His expression turned deadly.
“Someone knows.”
The next clue was a location.
A small town outside St. Louis.
We drove through the night.
The house was empty.
But inside, we found photographs.
My father.
Alive.
Older.
Walking with a cane.
And beside him...
Adrian’s father.
I stared at the photograph.
“My father knew him?”
Miriam whispered,
“Apparently.”
Then a recorded message started playing.
My father’s voice.
“Emma, if you have found this, you need to know the truth.”
He explained that years ago, he had been investigating a secret partnership between powerful families.
He had pretended to disappear.
He had been gathering evidence.
He discovered that Adrian’s father and Dante’s father had once worked together before turning against each other.
My father had been caught in the middle.
He had hidden evidence inside the Bellmont Trust.
He had also watched over me from a distance.
“I wanted to come home,” he said.
“But every time I got close, someone moved against you.”
I cried.
Dante held my hand.
The message continued.
“Do not trust anyone named Gregory Kane.”
Miriam gasped.
“Who is Gregory Kane?”
Dante looked at her.
“The former prosecutor.”
The man who had led the investigation against Adrian.
The man everyone trusted.
The man who had access to all evidence.
The man who had pushed the original custody case.
May you like
He was the final enemy.
And he had been inside the system the entire time.
