Chapter 10 - What the Ledger RevealedThe ledger contained more than names.
It contained lives.
Businesses used as fronts.
Judges who accepted money.
Police officers who sold information.
Politicians who had once been young attorneys willing to exchange favors.
Bank accounts.
Dates.
Payments.
Deaths disguised as accidents.
And buried between hundreds of coded entries, one repeated sequence appeared beside the names Bellandi, Moretti, and Ricci.
G.C.
Gabriel Conti.
But Gabriel had not worked alone.
Vittorio sat at Matteo’s penthouse dining table three days later, studying photocopies while Elena and Sophia remained nearby.
Luca stood at the window.
His injuries had begun fading.
His anger had not.
“There.”
Vittorio pointed at an entry dated March 2003.
A payment from a numbered account to a medical company.
Luca leaned over.
“What?”
“That company belonged to Gabriel.”
“So?”
“The recipient code.”
Vittorio tapped two letters.
A.M.
Luca went still.
“My father.”
“Yes.”
“Payment for what?”
Vittorio turned the page.
Hospital admission.
Private clinic outside Newark.
Three days after Alessandro Moretti officially disappeared.
Luca’s face drained.
“He was alive.”
“At least three days.”
Matteo stood beside him.
“We find the clinic records.”
“They’ll be twenty-three years old.”
“Then it might take an hour instead of ten minutes.”
Sophia looked at him.
“Your relationship with impossible tasks is unhealthy.”
“It has served me well.”
She almost smiled.
Vittorio continued through the ledger.
Another entry.
Another payment.
Then something strange.
A monthly transfer continued for eleven years.
To a medical trust.
Luca stared.
“No.”
Nobody spoke.
His father might not have died in 2003.
They found the answer that evening.
Alessandro Moretti had survived.
Gabriel Conti had not killed him.
He had imprisoned him through guardianship fraud.
After the confrontation in 2003, Alessandro suffered a severe head injury.
Conti arranged for him to be admitted under another name to a private neurological facility in Connecticut.
He remained there.
Alive.
Luca sat in Matteo’s office after hearing the news.
He said nothing for several minutes.
Then he began crying.
Quietly.
Without hiding it.
Matteo sat beside him.
Twenty-five years of friendship existed in the silence.
“I thought he left me.”
“I know.”
“I hated him.”
“I know.”
“He was alive.”
“Yes.”
Luca covered his face.
Matteo stayed.
Sophia watched from the doorway.
Something in her chest tightened.
She had once believed men like Matteo did not understand tenderness.
She was learning that some people simply hid it where the world could not exploit it.
Two days later, Luca met his father.
Alessandro remembered very little.
Age and neurological damage had taken much of him.
But when Luca entered the room, the old man looked at him for a long time.
Then whispered his childhood nickname.
“Luchino.”
Luca collapsed beside the bed.
Sophia stepped away to give them privacy.
Matteo found her near the end of the corridor.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’re crying.”
“That’s not illegal.”
“Depends on the jurisdiction.”
She laughed softly and wiped her face.
“Terrible joke.”
“I’m improving.”
“No.”
He stood beside her.
Their shoulders nearly touched.
“What happens now?”
“With Conti?”
“With everything.”
Matteo looked through the hospital window.
“The ledger goes to attorneys first.”
“Attorneys you trust?”
“Different ones.”
“Good.”
“Then federal prosecutors.”
Sophia looked at him.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“You could implicate yourself.”
“Possibly.”
“Are you afraid?”
Matteo considered it.
“Yes.”
She was surprised.
“You admit fear?”
“I’m trying a new personality.”
“It’s unsettling.”
He smiled.
Sophia’s phone rang.
Her mother.
She answered.
“Hi.”
Elena sounded nervous.
“There’s someone here.”
“Where?”
“At the apartment.”
Sophia’s body stiffened.
“Who?”
A pause.
“Preston.”
Matteo saw her expression.
“What?”
She put the call on speaker.
Elena continued.
“He says he wants to talk to you.”
Sophia’s anger returned instantly.
“Don’t let him inside.”
“He’s downstairs.”
“Call the police.”
“He says he has information about Conti.”
Matteo took the phone.
“Elena, don’t speak to him. We’re coming.”
Sophia stared.
“Excuse me?”
He handed the phone back.
“I meant we’re contacting law enforcement.”
She crossed her arms.
“Growth.”
“Painful growth.”
Within an hour, Preston sat inside an attorney’s conference room.
Police had been notified.
Two lawyers attended.
Sophia sat across from him.
Matteo sat beside her only because she had asked.
That mattered to both of them.
Preston looked exhausted.
His expensive confidence was gone.
“Conti hired me three years ago.”
Sophia felt sick despite expecting it.
“To date me?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“To get close to you.”
“That is dating me.”
“He wanted information about your mother and grandmother.”
“You knew why?”
“Not fully.”
“How much did he pay you?”
Preston looked ashamed.
“Fifty thousand initially.”
Sophia laughed.
The sound was empty.
“Three years of my life.”
“It didn’t stay fake.”
“Don’t.”
“Sophie—”
“Don’t call me that.”
He looked down.
“I did care about you.”
“People who care about someone don’t make them afraid in their own home.”
Preston closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“No. You know now because there are consequences.”
The room became silent.
Matteo said nothing.
This was Sophia’s conversation.
Preston took a breath.
“Conti wanted me to convince you to visit Italy.”
“I remember.”
“When you kept refusing, he became impatient.”
“So did you.”
“Yes.”
“You pushed me harder.”
“Yes.”
“Literally.”
Preston flinched.
“Yes.”
Sophia stared at him.
Months ago, she imagined hearing him admit it would feel satisfying.
It did not.
It felt like standing beside the grave of something she had once believed was love.
“Why come to New York?”
“Conti found out you worked at Ricci’s restaurant. He thought I had arranged it.”
Matteo frowned.
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Then who created the advertisement?”
“I don’t know.”
Luca’s false referral had been explained.
The targeted job advertisement had not.
Preston continued.
“Conti told me to get you away from Ricci.”
“Why?”
“He thought Matteo would eventually connect you to the Bellandis.”
Sophia looked at Matteo.
“He was right.”
“Yes.”
Preston rubbed his hands together.
“When you wouldn’t leave with me, Conti changed plans.”
“The estate attack.”
“I didn’t know that would happen.”
Matteo’s voice became cold.
“Your company rented the vehicle.”
“An assistant account did. Conti had access.”
“You expect us to believe that?”
“I have records.”
He produced a flash drive.
Emails.
Payment instructions.
Contracts.
Enough evidence to strengthen the case significantly.
Sophia watched him.
“Why give us this?”
Preston looked at her.
“Because Conti’s people tried to kill me yesterday.”
That answer sounded believable.
“You’re afraid.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He looked wounded.
Sophia felt nothing.
After Preston left in police protection, she stood alone on the conference room balcony.
Matteo joined her several minutes later.
“Did I waste three years?”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“How can you say that?”
“Because you survived them.”
“That sounds like motivational nonsense.”
“Probably.”
He leaned against the railing.
“But surviving taught you what you’ll never tolerate again.”
Sophia stared at the city.
“I don’t want pain to be educational.”
“It usually isn’t polite enough to ask.”
She looked at him.
“You always answer like that?”
“Like what?”
“As if someone paid you to make darkness sound philosophical.”
“No one could afford it.”
She laughed.
Then became serious.
“I’m leaving Bellissimo.”
Matteo’s expression changed.
“Because of me?”
“Partly.”
He accepted that.
“I need something that isn’t connected to Preston, Conti, Bellandi secrets, or Ricci family history.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have a degree.”
“You investigated that too.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head.
“I worked in event design.”
“You were good.”
“Stop reading my file.”
“I stopped.”
“You remember it.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“It’s worse.”
She smiled despite herself.
Then Matteo said, “I have a building.”
Sophia groaned.
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the proposal.”
“It begins with ‘I have a building.’ That is already billionaire nonsense.”
“A historical property in Manhattan. We’re converting it into an arts and hospitality center.”
“We?”
“A foundation.”
“What foundation?”
“One I’m creating.”
Her expression shifted.
“For what?”
“My mother.”
Matteo looked toward the skyline.
“The legitimate assets that came from my family should do something legitimate.”
Sophia listened.
“Community arts programs. Restaurant training. Scholarships. Restoration.”
“Restoration?”
“For old buildings.”
Now she understood.
“You want my mother involved.”
“I was thinking of you.”
Sophia blinked.
“As what?”
“Design coordinator.”
“No charity job.”
“It’s not.”
“No secret salary.”
“Public scale.”
“No special title.”
“You’ll interview.”
“No automatic hiring.”
“Agreed.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“You agreed suspiciously fast.”
“Because I already know you’ll get the job.”
“That is automatic hiring with extra steps.”
Matteo smiled.
Sophia shook her head.
But something warm had entered her chest.
Not because of the job.
Because he had listened.
He was learning how to offer without deciding for her.
That mattered.
A month earlier, Matteo Ricci had ordered someone to find everything about Sophia Bennett.
May you like
Now he was beginning to understand that the most important things about her could never be discovered in a file.
They had to be given freely.
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