Chapter 7
The name was Vittorio Marchetti.
Sophia learned it in the car on the way back to the estate, listening to Luca make calls in a voice that had become entirely business. No warmth. No hesitation. The man who had been softened by the ultrasound, by the park bench, by the confession he had just made — that man was gone. In his place was the boss New York feared.
“Who is he?” she asked when Luca finally hung up.
“He ran the organization that used your father’s trucks five years ago. We believed he died eighteen months later in Sicily.” He paused. “One of my men photographed him yesterday in Brooklyn.”
Sophia’s stomach tightened. “Why would he come back now?”
Luca did not answer quickly enough.
“Stop deciding which truth I’m allowed to hear.”
He exhaled slowly. “Someone has been asking about Antonio’s records.”
“The records at Dad’s house?”
“Possibly.”
“Does Marchetti know about me?”
“He always knew Antonio had a daughter.”
Sophia stared at him. “And you never thought I deserved to know that?”
“I thought he was dead.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It isn’t.” For once, he did not offer another excuse.
When they reached the estate, Luca’s security team was already waiting. He turned to her. “I need to speak with them. You can stay or you can go rest.”
Sophia almost laughed. A week earlier, being invited into Luca’s security meeting would have seemed impossible. “I’ll stay.”
Inside his study, photographs and reports covered the desk. Sophia saw Vittorio Marchetti for the first time. He was older than Luca, perhaps in his late fifties, silver-haired and elegant. He looked less like a criminal than the kind of man who donated wings to hospitals.
One photograph showed him speaking to a man Sophia recognized. She leaned closer.
“Wait.”
Luca looked at her. “What?”
She pointed. “I’ve seen him.”
The room became silent. Carlo stepped forward. “Where?”
“At my father’s funeral.”
Luca’s face hardened. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. He introduced himself as one of Dad’s business associates.”
Carlo studied the photograph. “His name is Adrien Vale. He worked for Marchetti before the bombing.”
Sophia felt cold. “And nobody thought that mattered?”
“We thought he’d left the country.”
She folded her arms. “Apparently, everyone in this story dies or leaves the country until they become inconvenient again.”
Then she remembered. The letter from her father. She pulled out her phone and opened the photographs she had taken in Antonio’s office. She enlarged one page. At the bottom, beneath transportation records, Antonio had written, AV asked about Sophia again. He cannot know what I kept.
“AV,” she said. “Adrien Vale.”
Luca took the phone. “Why didn’t you show me this yesterday?”
“Maybe because yesterday I was busy discovering my marriage began as a security operation.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Fair.”
“What did my father keep?”
Luca was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at her with something she had never seen in his eyes before. Respect. Not the protective kind he had always given her. The genuine kind.
“There’s only one thing Antonio had that Marchetti would come back for after all this time.” He paused. “The manifests. The original shipping records that proved who inside my organization was feeding Marchetti information.”
Sophia understood. “If Marchetti finds those records, he finds the name of the man who betrayed you.”
“Who is still alive.”
“Who is still inside your organization.”
Luca nodded slowly. “Yes.”
She looked at him. “Then we find the records before he does.”
Luca studied her. “We?”
“You’re not doing this without me, Luca. Not anymore. Those records are in my father’s house. I’m the one who knows where he hid things. I’m the one who found the key behind the romance novel.”
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“For the record,” Carlo said quietly, “I told you she was the best thing that ever happened to this family.”
Luca did not answer. But he looked at Sophia with an expression she could not quite read. It was not the look of a man protecting a debt. It was the look of a man who had just realized the woman he married was stronger than he had ever allowed himself to see.
