Chapter 2 - The Money My Father Hid
Damian stopped fighting the moment the second handcuff clicked around his wrist.
That frightened me more than when he had been punching me.
A few minutes earlier, he had been wild—screaming that the house belonged to him, threatening to break every bone in my body until I signed the quitclaim deed.
Now he was silent.
Completely silent.
Officer Ruiz pushed him toward the front hallway while another officer kept Vanessa separated near the dining room.
Marcus Hale stood beside the table, one hand resting near my father’s digital recorder.
I was still on the floor.
Every breath felt like someone was driving a blade beneath my ribs.
“Ms. Moretti, the ambulance is outside,” Ruiz said. “We need to get you checked.”
“I’m not leaving until I hear the rest.”
Marcus looked at me.
“Elena.”
“Play it.”
“Elena, you’re hurt.”
“My father said Damian thought I didn’t know about missing money.”
My voice shook, but not from fear.
“What money?”
Damian turned his head.
For the first time since the police entered, he looked directly at me.
And smiled.
It was small.
Cold.
Almost amused.
Marcus noticed it too.
“Take him outside,” he said.
Damian laughed.
“You still think you know what Dad was doing, Marcus?”
Officer Ruiz tightened his grip on Damian’s arm.
“Keep moving.”
Damian looked over his shoulder at me.
“You want to know where the money went, Elena?”
“Shut up,” Vanessa snapped.
Damian’s smile disappeared.
That was interesting.
He ignored the officer and stared at his wife.
Vanessa realized too late that she had spoken.
Marcus picked up the recorder.
“What does she know?”
Damian said nothing.
Vanessa folded her arms across her chest.
“This is ridiculous.”
I forced myself onto one elbow.
Pain exploded across my side.
Marcus immediately knelt beside me.
“Don’t move.”
“Ask her.”
“Elena—”
“Ask Vanessa what she knows about Dad’s money.”
Vanessa’s face hardened.
“You’re lying on the floor bleeding and you’re still trying to make this about money.”
“No,” I whispered. “You made it about money when you told my brother to kill me.”
That silenced the room.
Vanessa looked toward the police.
“I never said that.”
Officer Ruiz glanced toward the dining room ceiling.
“House have security cameras?”
My heart sank.
“No.”
Damian had insisted Dad remove them two years earlier.
He claimed they invaded family privacy.
At the time, Dad had agreed.
Or at least I thought he had.
Marcus slowly stood.
“Victor never removed all of them.”
Every face turned toward him.
“What?” I asked.
Marcus reached into his briefcase again.
This time he removed a plain white envelope.
My name was written across the front in my father’s handwriting.
ELENA — ONLY IF DAMIAN FORCES THE DEED.
I stared at it.
My father had known.
Not suspected.
Known.
Marcus handed it to me.
My fingers trembled as I opened it.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
Three sentences.
Elena,
If Marcus gives you this, Damian has crossed the line I prayed he would never cross.
Do not trust what you find in the basement safe.
Trust what is missing.
Dad.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
“What basement safe?” I asked.
Marcus looked confused.
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head.
Damian began laughing from the hallway.
“You really didn’t tell her?”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“Tell me what?”
Damian leaned against the doorframe despite the officer holding him.
“There’s a room behind Dad’s workshop.”
I stared at him.
Dad’s workshop occupied the far end of the basement. He had spent hundreds of evenings down there restoring antique furniture.
I had been in that room a thousand times.
“There is no room behind the workshop.”
“There is if you know where the door is.”
Vanessa suddenly moved.
Fast.
She grabbed her purse from the dining chair and ran.
Officer Ruiz shouted.
Vanessa reached the kitchen before another officer caught her near the back door.
Her purse fell.
Something metallic skidded across the hardwood floor.
Marcus bent down.
A small brass key.
The number 317 was stamped into its head.
Damian closed his eyes.
Vanessa stopped struggling.
And I understood immediately.
“That opens the safe.”
Nobody answered.
But they didn’t need to.
The ambulance took me to White Plains Hospital.
Three ribs were cracked. My left cheek required stitches. My wrist was badly sprained, but nothing was permanently damaged.
Physically.
At least that was what the doctor said.
Emotionally, I couldn’t stop hearing Vanessa’s voice.
Finish it, Damian.
Put her down.
I had known my brother could be selfish.
Cruel.
Jealous.
But until that night, some foolish part of me still believed there was a line blood would prevent him from crossing.
There wasn’t.
At 3:18 the next morning, Marcus appeared in my hospital room.
He looked like he hadn’t slept.
“What happened?” I asked.
He closed the door behind him.
“The police got a warrant.”
“For the basement?”
He nodded.
“They found the hidden room.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
Marcus didn’t answer immediately.
He pulled a chair close to the bed.
“The safe was open.”
“But Vanessa had the key.”
“Yes.”
“So how—”
“It had already been opened before police arrived.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible. Damian was with me.”
“Someone else wasn’t.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
Marcus placed a clear evidence photograph on my blanket.
It showed a steel safe built into the concrete wall.
The door hung open.
Inside were rows of empty shelves.
Except for one thing.
A framed photograph.
I picked up the picture.
My father stood outside a small building beside a man I didn’t recognize.
The photograph looked at least twenty years old.
On the back, someone had written an address.
47 Mercer Street.
Yonkers, New York.
Underneath it were four words.
ASK WHAT DAMIAN SOLD.
I looked at Marcus.
“What did my brother sell?”
Marcus’s face was grim.
“That’s what I came to tell you.”
He opened another folder.
“Over the last eighteen months, approximately $3.8 million disappeared from companies your father controlled.”
My mouth went dry.
“Companies?”
“Elena, your father owned far more than the house.”
“How much more?”
Marcus paused.
“Enough that someone may have killed him for it.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“My father died of a heart attack.”
“That’s what the death certificate says.”
He leaned closer.
“But yesterday, before Damian attacked you, I received a package Victor arranged to have delivered after his death.”
“What was inside?”
“A copy of his medical records.”
Marcus lowered his voice.
“And a handwritten note saying he believed someone had been poisoning him.”
I stared at him.
Outside my hospital room, a cart rolled down the corridor.
Somewhere a monitor beeped.
Life continued as if my entire family had not just shattered open.
“Who did he think was doing it?”
Marcus looked toward the closed door.
Then back at me.
“He wrote one name.”
I stopped breathing.
“Damian?”
Marcus shook his head.
“No.”
He reached into the folder and slid a photocopied page toward me.
My father’s handwriting filled the bottom.
If my symptoms worsen, investigate the person who has been preparing my medication.
I read the next line.
And every bit of warmth left my body.
May you like
Because the name my father had written wasn’t Damian.
It was Vanessa.
