Chapter 3 - The Secret My Father Left Behind Could Destroy the Moretti EmpireI barely slept.
At sunrise, Lorenzo sat across from me.
“Tell me everything about your father.”
“I've told you.”
“No.”
“You want his secrets.”
“Yes.”
“I don't know them.”
“Then help me remember.”
“How?”
“Ask yourself what changed before he disappeared.”
I thought.
He had become anxious.
He stopped going to restaurants.
He stopped trusting banks.
He started hiding documents.
One night, he burned photographs.
Another time, he told me:
“If anyone ever asks, I was a boring accountant.”
At the time, I laughed.
Now I understood.
“He was afraid.”
“Of whom?”
“I don't know.”
Lorenzo leaned forward.
“Did he have a safe?”
I remembered.
A small metal box.
Hidden behind a painting.
After he disappeared, my mother searched for it.
She never found it.
“Maybe.”
“Where?”
“At my childhood home.”
We went there.
The house was abandoned.
Dust covered everything.
I walked through my old bedroom.
Memories came back.
My father's books.
My mother's piano.
The hallway where I used to wait for them.
Lorenzo followed silently.
I stopped beside a painting.
Moved it.
A safe appeared.
My hands shook.
The combination was my birthday.
The door opened.
Inside was a notebook.
And a key.
Lorenzo looked at the notebook.
“That's what they want.”
I opened it.
My father's handwriting filled the pages.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Companies.
Then one name appeared repeatedly.
Vega.
Dr. Adrian Vega.
The same doctor who had treated me as a child.
Lorenzo's expression hardened.
“You know him?”
“He was my father's friend.”
“No.”
“What?”
“He was my father's enemy.”
I looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“My father believed Vega was stealing from the organization.”
“He was a doctor.”
“Doctors can steal.”
I turned the page.
There was a photograph.
Vega.
My father.
And another man.
Lorenzo's father.
They were standing beside a shipping container.
I frowned.
“What is this?”
“Smuggling.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
My father had been involved.
But then I found the final page.
The money is not mine.
It belongs to the victims.
I looked at Lorenzo.
“What money?”
He shook his head.
“I don't know.”
“Then why is your family searching?”
“Because if my father knew, he would have told me.”
I read the next line.
If I disappear, find the girl.
My blood ran cold.
“Girl?”
Lorenzo took the notebook.
A name had been written underneath.
Isabella Kane.
“Who is she?”
“I don't know.”
We searched.
Nothing.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown.
A woman's voice spoke.
“Stop opening your father's things.”
“Who are you?”
“You don't remember me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I was there.”
“Where?”
“On the night your father disappeared.”
The line ended.
Lorenzo took the phone.
“Trace it.”
His security team tried.
Nothing.
Then another call.
This time from the hospital.
My attending physician.
“Mia, you need to come in.”
“What happened?”
“Someone accessed your employee file.”
“Who?”
“We don't know.”
“What did they take?”
There was a pause.
“Your father's records.”
My stomach turned.
Lorenzo heard.
He looked at me.
“Get dressed.”
“Why?”
“Because someone is moving.”
We drove to the hospital.
The records office had been broken into.
No cameras.
No alarms.
Only one thing was missing.
My father's medical file.
Lorenzo examined the room.
“What does this mean?”
“He wasn't treated here.”
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“Then why keep his medical file?”
I frowned.
I didn't know.
Until I remembered something.
My father had diabetes.
But six months before he disappeared, his condition changed.
He suddenly stopped taking insulin.
The doctor said he had been cured.
I had never questioned it.
Now I did.
“What if he was poisoned?”
Lorenzo looked at me.
“Then his death was staged.”
I stared.
My father might still be alive.
Before we could investigate, a gunman entered.
Lorenzo shot him.
The man fell.
In his pocket was a photograph.
My father.
Standing beside a woman.
The same woman whose voice had called me.
I turned the photograph over.
A name.
Isabella Kane.
Lorenzo went pale.
“She's dangerous.”
“Why?”
“She is the daughter of the man trying to take my empire.”
“Who?”
Lorenzo looked toward the hallway.
“Victor Kane.”
The name meant nothing to me.
It meant everything to him.
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“Who is Victor?”
“The man who started the war.”
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