Chapter 5 - The Nephew Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
I expected Vincent to explode.
Instead, he sat down.
Marco had just told him that the nephew his family had mourned for twenty-four years was alive, living in Chicago, and working for Carlo.
The old Vincent would have started issuing orders before the sentence ended.
Bring him in.
Take his phone.
Search his apartment.
Find everyone he has spoken to in the last six months.
This Vincent looked at me first.
“You need to rest,” he said quietly.
I almost smiled despite myself.
“That is the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”
He glanced at Marco.
“Tell me only what matters now.”
Marco nodded.
“Lucas Matthew Reed, age twenty-four. He works in compliance for Moretti Continental Holdings. Joined eighteen months ago. Clean record. No arrests. No known organized-crime ties outside his employment.”
“Then why did you say he works for Carlo?” I asked.
“Because Carlo personally transferred him into a confidential internal audit unit six months ago.”
Vincent frowned.
“What unit?”
“The one reviewing legacy cash accounts.”
Something passed between the two men.
I hated when Moretti conversations became coded.
“What does that mean in normal language?”
Vincent answered.
“It means Lucas has access to transactions Carlo has spent years keeping away from regular accountants.”
“Could Lucas be investigating him?”
Marco hesitated.
“Possibly.”
Vincent looked at him. “You have more.”
Marco placed his phone on the bedside table.
“We intercepted a message Lucas sent from a prepaid number this morning. It was addressed to me.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
Marco read it aloud.
Tell Vincent I sent the first envelope. I did not send the baby shoes. If Claire is still alive, keep her away from Carlo. I have proof about Alessandro. I will trade it for one thing: no Moretti follows me after this is over.
Vincent stared at the screen.
I sat up despite the nurse’s instruction to rest.
“Lucas sent you my medical reports?”
“The copies,” Marco said. “It appears so.”
“How did he get them?”
Vincent’s face darkened.
“Family insurance database.”
“That database seems to have more holes than a screen door.”
“I’m shutting it down.”
“Good.”
Marco continued. “Lucas says he accessed the records because Carlo had flagged your name. He saw the pregnancy confirmation before Vincent did.”
My skin crawled.
The idea that strangers had known about my baby while I was buying tiny shoes in secret made me feel violated all over again.
Vincent saw my face.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t access it.”
“No. But it existed because my family believed privacy was optional when the Moretti name was involved.”
He looked at Marco.
“Every family medical database, travel account, and security tracker is to be dismantled unless the individual person has explicitly opted in.”
Marco blinked.
“That is going to create resistance.”
“Then let them resist.”
I looked at Vincent.
He did not look back.
Maybe because he knew this was not a performance for me.
Maybe because he was finally beginning to understand that changing only when I was watching would not count.
Lucas agreed to a video call that afternoon.
Lukas set up the connection through an encrypted system. Marco stayed in the room. Vincent sat near the window. I sat on the sofa with a blanket over my legs and a glass of water beside me.
The screen flickered.
A young man appeared.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Lucas had dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and the same black-brown eyes as Vincent.
He looked more like Alessandro from the old photographs than Vincent did.
But there was something in the tilt of his head that belonged unmistakably to the Moretti family.
Vincent whispered, “Luca.”
The young man’s face hardened.
“My name is Lucas.”
Vincent swallowed.
“Lucas.”
“You don’t get to call me anything else.”
“I understand.”
Lucas looked surprised by the answer.
Then his gaze shifted toward me.
“You’re Claire.”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
The question came with such genuine concern that I almost laughed at the insanity of it.
The supposedly dead nephew of my mafia husband was asking about my health over a secret video call from Chicago.
“I’m stable,” I said. “The baby is stable.”
Lucas exhaled.
“Good.”
“Why did you send the envelope?”
“Because I saw the Aspen report.”
Vincent’s face tightened.
Lucas continued.
“Carlo had a copy before Vincent did. He was proud of it.”
“Proud?” I asked.
“He said the marriage was finished.”
Vincent’s eyes went cold.
Lucas looked at him.
“You gave him exactly what he wanted.”
“Yes,” Vincent said.
Again Lucas seemed thrown by the lack of defense.
“You’re not going to threaten me?”
“No.”
“Tell me I don’t understand?”
“No.”
Lucas leaned back.
“Interesting.”
I almost smiled.
Vincent did not.
“How long have you known who you are?” he asked.
“Six years.”
“How?”
“My adoptive father died when I was eighteen. He left me a letter from Matteo Russo.”
“The lawyer Elena trusted,” I said.
Lucas nodded.
“The letter said my biological parents were Alessandro and Elena Moretti. It said they were killed because my father refused to hand control of certain family assets to Carlo.”
Vincent closed his eyes briefly.
“Why didn’t you contact me?”
Lucas laughed without humor.
“Because the letter also said you had become Carlo’s enforcer.”
The word hung in the room.
Vincent did not deny it.
“Were you?” Lucas asked.
“For a time.”
“Did you kill my father?”
Vincent’s head snapped up.
“No.”
“Did you know Carlo did?”
“No.”
“Did you ever ask enough questions?”
Vincent went silent.
Lucas’s expression hardened.
“That’s what I thought.”
I watched Vincent absorb the blow.
Twenty-four years of grief was not going to turn into a family reunion because DNA matched.
Lucas had grown up without his parents.
Vincent had grown up under the man who may have killed them.
Both had been robbed.
Neither owed the other instant forgiveness.
“What proof do you have?” I asked.
Lucas looked at me.
“Financial records. Audio. A ledger Carlo kept off the books. Payments to Daniel Riva before Alessandro’s car exploded. Payments to the clinic in Lugano. Payments to Sophia’s brother’s creditors.”
Sophia covered her mouth from the far side of the room.
Lucas noticed her.
“You’re there too.”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“Save it for Claire.”
“I already tried.”
“Try for the rest of your life.”
Sophia looked down.
I could not disagree.
Lucas continued.
“Carlo also paid someone at the Aspen resort before your trip.”
My heart kicked.
“Before?”
“Yes.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“For what?”
“To make sure any incident involving Claire stayed off the official incident system until after you left.”
The room went cold.
I thought of the operations manager warning Vincent about the weather.
The delay in emergency response.
The way the manager had looked terrified when rescuers finally reached me.
“Was the cable car stop planned?” I asked.
Lucas shook his head.
“No. Carlo didn’t know Vincent would do that.”
Vincent looked sick.
“But Carlo had prepared the ground for something,” Lucas said. “An argument. A fall. A medical event. Anything that could be buried or twisted.”
“So Aspen was a trap,” Marco said.
Lucas looked directly at Vincent.
“The trap was built. You chose to step into it.”
Vincent nodded once.
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
That mattered more than it should have.
Lucas reached toward his camera.
“I want immunity from your family. Not legal immunity. I haven’t committed crimes for Carlo. I mean I want the Morettis out of my life when this ends.”
Vincent answered immediately.
“You have it.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to give the government.”
“I don’t care.”
Lucas studied him.
“It could destroy your company.”
“Then it deserves to be destroyed.”
“It could expose things you did.”
Vincent’s face went still.
“Then I answer for them.”
I stared at him.
Marco stared too.
Lucas said nothing for several seconds.
Then he nodded slowly.
“Maybe Elena was wrong about you.”
Vincent’s voice was quiet.
“She wasn’t wrong then.”
The call ended twenty minutes later with a plan.
Lucas would send copies of everything to a federal prosecutor in Chicago and to Lukas in Switzerland. No Moretti server. No Moretti lawyer. No family intermediary.
The evidence would exist in too many places to disappear.
That night, I woke at three in the morning and found Vincent sitting alone on the terrace outside my hospital room.
The glass door was closed.
He had not entered without permission.
I opened it.
He stood immediately.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need a nurse?”
“No.”
I stepped onto the terrace, wrapped in a blanket.
The city lights shimmered below.
“Why are you still here?” I asked.
“Because if I go to the hotel, I will stare at the ceiling there instead.”
I leaned against the railing.
“Lucas hates you.”
“He has reasons.”
“That hurts.”
“Yes.”
“You can say it.”
He looked at me.
“It hurts.”
That was new too.
Vincent had spent his life converting pain into anger before anyone could see it.
I looked at his hands.
No fists.
No tension.
Just hands resting on the railing beside mine.
“Do you want to know something terrible?” he asked.
“Depends how terrible.”
“When you asked for a divorce in Aspen, my first thought was that you didn’t mean it.”
I said nothing.
“My second thought was that I could stop it.”
I turned toward him.
He continued before I could speak.
“I knew which judge handled high-profile filings. I knew which lawyers could delay it. I knew which accounts were in my name. I knew every lever I could pull.”
My throat tightened.
“And then?”
“Then I saw the ring in my hand.”
His voice dropped.
“And I realized every lever I was thinking about pulling was another cable car.”
I looked away because my eyes burned.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t want you to mistake restraint for goodness. It is something I am learning, not something I always had.”
I had no answer.
The next morning, Lucas’s first evidence package arrived.
It contained bank records, audio files, and one video.
The video had been recorded secretly in Carlo’s Chicago office six weeks earlier.
Carlo sat behind his desk while Daniel Riva stood near the window.
“Vincent will come back when she leaves,” Carlo said.
“And if she doesn’t?” Riva asked.
Carlo poured himself a drink.
“Then make sure she does not bring that child home.”
My blood turned to ice.
The video continued.
Riva asked, “Like Alessandro?”
Carlo looked straight toward the hidden camera.
Then he smiled.
“Alessandro should have listened the first time.”
The recording was enough to open a murder investigation.
It was also enough to prove my baby had been marked before I ever boarded the plane to Switzerland.
Lukas called the Swiss federal police.
Marco contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Vincent called no one.
He simply stood beside my hospital bed while I watched the video a second time.
When it ended, I looked at him.
“Carlo will run.”
“Yes.”
“Or he’ll come here.”
“Yes.”
“What would the old Vincent do?”
His face became hard.
“Hunt him before the police could.”
“And you?”
He took a long breath.
“Give them the evidence and let him stand in a courtroom.”
I searched his eyes.
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the most honest answer he could have given.
Then his phone rang.
Marco answered his own at the same moment.
Both men looked down.
Both faces changed.
“What?” I asked.
Vincent’s voice went flat.
“Carlo’s private jet just filed a flight plan.”
“To where?”
May you like
He looked at me.
“Zurich.”
