Chapter 4 - The Room Beneath the Study
Alessia refused to stay at the hospital without answers.
Nathan protested. Valerio protested harder. She won by threatening to call the police herself and tell them her husband was obstructing a victim.
Forty minutes later, she returned to the Rinaldi estate in a wheelchair with a brace on her leg and murder in her expression.
The wedding decorations still hung in the ballroom.
White roses. Gold candles. One overturned chair.
Alessia did not look at it.
The archive beneath the old study smelled like paper, cedar, and years of deliberate silence.
Valerio unlocked a steel door with the brass key.
Rows of boxes filled the room.
One shelf was labeled with the date of Alessia’s car crash.
She stared at him.
“You had a file.”
“My father had a file.”
“You knew it existed.”
“I knew he had people investigating.”
“And you never told me.”
“I was trying to keep you out of it.”
“Out of what?”
He opened the first box.
Inside were photographs of Alessia’s wrecked car, repair invoices, police reports, and a private mechanic’s statement.
BRAKE LINE CUT WITH TOOL.
Alessia stopped breathing.
Valerio swore softly.
“That page wasn’t in the report I saw.”
“Convenient.”
“Alessia—”
She lifted a hand.
“Not now.”
Marco found a second folder. It contained pharmacy invoices bearing Alessia’s name.
Six months of blue capsules.
All paid through a vendor called VSR Medical Logistics.
Alessia frowned.
“VSR.”
Valerio’s face changed.
Veronica Salvi Rinaldi.
Her full legal name.
Marco opened another file.
“This is worse.”
Inside was a drafted medical competency petition stating Alessia had suffered progressive neurological decline following her crash and might soon become incapable of managing financial affairs.
The petition had never been filed.
Yet.
Attached was a power-of-attorney form transferring control of Alessia’s inherited twenty-two percent interest in Bellini Maritime if two doctors certified her incompetent.
Alessia read the final page.
Her signature appeared at the bottom.
Perfect.
Except she had never signed it.
Valerio’s face turned cold enough to frighten Marco.
“Who witnessed this?”
Alessia looked at the signature beneath hers.
Cesare Rinaldi.
Valerio’s uncle.
The family’s senior adviser.
The man currently chairing the emergency board meeting at Bellini Maritime.
Marco checked the time.
“Meeting started seven minutes ago.”
Alessia’s eyes widened.
“My shares.”
Valerio was already moving.
Then his phone rang.
He answered and said nothing for several seconds.
“What?” Alessia demanded.
Valerio slowly lowered the phone.
“Someone filed the competency petition twenty minutes ago.”
Alessia felt the room tilt.
May you like
“And they attached a hospital record saying you lost consciousness after the fall.”
She had never lost consciousness.
