Chapter 8 - A Dead Father's Shadow
Silvio stared through the visitation glass.
“Say that again.”
Lucinda’s voice trembled.
“I saw Dad.”
“No.”
“I know what I saw.”
“Dad died ten years ago.”
“So did Mom.”
Silvio had no answer.
Lucinda almost laughed.
“That’s the problem with this family, Silvio. Dead doesn’t mean anything.”
“What exactly did you see?”
She closed her eyes.
“Grant met Voss.”
“At the marina.”
“Yes.”
“They argued.”
“Grant wanted the original Marcellus ledger.”
“And Voss?”
“He said he didn’t have it.”
“Then?”
“Grant pulled a gun.”
Lucinda swallowed.
“Voss fired first.”
“Where was Grant hit?”
“Chest.”
“Did he die?”
“I don’t know. He fell.”
“And Dad?”
“A man stepped out of the warehouse.”
“Describe him.”
“Older. Thin. Walking with a cane.”
“That could be anyone.”
“He called Voss Samuel.”
Silvio stopped.
Adrian Voss’s father had been Samuel.
Dead for nearly twenty-five years.
Almost nobody still alive knew that relationship intimately.
“Then what?”
“Voss said, ‘Arturo, we’re out of time.’”
Silvio’s pulse hammered.
“Why didn’t you tell police?”
Lucinda laughed bitterly.
“Tell them my father, who has been dead for a decade, appeared after my husband was shot?”
She leaned closer.
“They already think I’m a murderer.”
“You are.”
The words hurt both of them.
Lucinda looked down.
“Yes.”
Silvio stayed silent.
She deserved prosecution for Arturo’s death.
Maybe prison.
But that didn’t mean every other claim she made was false.
“What happened to Grant?”
“I lost sight of him.”
“You said he fell.”
“When Dad came out, I panicked.”
“You left?”
“I drove away.”
Silvio stared.
“And twenty minutes later Voss’s body ended up in Grant’s car.”
“Yes.”
“Meaning whoever staged Grant’s death wanted people to believe the burned body was Grant.”
Lucinda nodded.
Silvio left without saying goodbye.
Rachel met him in the hallway.
“You believe her?”
“I believe she saw something.”
“Arturo?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel handed him a report.
“Forensics confirmed the body in Grant’s car isn’t Grant.”
“Voss?”
“Dental comparison says yes.”
Silvio’s suspicion was correct.
“Cause of death?”
“Gunshot before the fire.”
“Lucinda’s story matches.”
“It does.”
Silvio stared at the report.
“Where’s Grant?”
“Missing.”
“And if Arturo is alive?”
Rachel looked uncomfortable.
“We exhume him.”
Silvio laughed bitterly.
“Another empty coffin?”
“We’ll find out.”
They did.
Twenty-four hours later, Arturo Moretti’s grave was opened.
Unlike Isabella’s, the coffin contained a body.
DNA testing took hours.
Silvio waited at the medical examiner’s office.
Rachel entered just before dawn.
“That’s Arturo.”
Silvio exhaled.
“So Lucinda imagined it.”
“Not necessarily.”
Rachel sat.
“The body is your father.”
“Then he couldn’t have been at the marina.”
“Correct.”
“Unless—”
Silvio stopped.
Rachel watched him.
“What?”
Silvio remembered an old family photograph.
Arturo at twenty.
Standing beside another young man who looked almost identical.
His brother.
Anthony Moretti.
Arturo’s older brother had supposedly died during the Vietnam War.
No body recovered.
Only military confirmation.
Silvio stood.
“My father had a brother.”
Rachel immediately understood.
“You think Lucinda saw your uncle?”
“If Anthony survived…”
“He’d be in his eighties.”
“Lucinda described an old man.”
Rachel called for records.
By afternoon, they had discovered something extraordinary.
Anthony Moretti’s military file contained inconsistencies.
His death certificate was issued despite no remains being recovered.
His service record ended abruptly.
Then, two years after his supposed death, a man named Anton Morel entered Switzerland using a passport photograph that looked remarkably similar to Anthony.
For decades, Anton Morel appeared as a financial adviser attached to Marcellus shell companies.
Silvio stared at the image.
Anthony had been alive.
And working behind the scenes.
“Why fake his death?” Rachel asked.
“Maybe to operate Marcellus without public scrutiny.”
Marco entered.
“We found the warehouse.”
Inside the abandoned marina building they found blood.
Grant’s blood.
But not enough to establish death.
They also found a hidden basement office.
Old phones.
Passports.
Financial ledgers.
And surveillance equipment.
One wall contained photographs of Mia and Ethan.
Hundreds.
School.
Playgrounds.
Doctors’ visits.
Lucinda’s home.
Another wall contained photographs of Silvio.
Another Isabella.
One photograph showed Grant speaking to an elderly man.
Anthony Moretti.
Silvio stared at his uncle’s face.
“He was controlling all of them.”
Rachel shook her head.
“Maybe.”
A laptop sat on the desk.
Its hard drive had been wiped.
Marco found one file in temporary memory.
A scheduled message.
Recipient: S. MORETTI.
Delivery: midnight.
They waited.
At exactly 12:00 a.m., Silvio’s phone received an email.
No sender.
One video attachment.
He opened it.
Anthony Moretti appeared.
Old.
Thin.
A cane beside him.
“Hello, nephew.”
Silvio felt his blood run cold.
“If you are seeing this, Adrian has failed.”
Anthony smiled.
“And Grant has become desperate.”
The camera moved.
Isabella sat tied to a chair behind him.
Silvio stood.
His mother was alive.
And captured.
Anthony continued.
“I have spent fifty years keeping Marcellus from collapsing.”
His voice remained calm.
“Your father tried to destroy it.”
“Elena tried to expose it.”
“Now you are making the same mistake.”
Silvio gripped the phone.
Anthony leaned toward the camera.
“Bring Mia and Ethan to the Moretti shipyard tomorrow at midnight.”
Rachel said, “Absolutely not.”
Anthony continued.
“In exchange, I will return your mother.”
Isabella looked toward the camera.
“Silvio, don’t—”
Anthony slapped her.
Silvio lunged toward a screen he could not reach.
Anthony smiled.
“The children are the final biological keys.”
He paused.
“And there’s one detail Elena never discovered.”
Anthony looked directly into the lens.
“Mia is not a Russo.”
Silvio froze.
“She is a Moretti.”
The video ended.
Silence filled the room.
Mia was supposedly Elena and David Russo’s daughter.
If Anthony was telling the truth, everything changed again.
Because only one Moretti man had been close enough to Elena eight years ago to father Mia.
Silvio.
And Silvio knew with absolute certainty that he had never touched his cousin.
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Which meant Anthony’s claim pointed toward a secret nobody had considered.
Elena Russo might not have been Silvio’s biological cousin at all.
