Chapter 2
Thomas looked offended by the memory.
“A useless young man named Peter.”
A faint ripple of laughter moved around the table.
Even I smiled.
The tension eased just enough for everyone to breathe.
Then Elena said, “When I returned, the tape was gone.”
My smile vanished.
“Gone from where?”
“My suitcase.”
Victor frowned.
“You told me you still had it.”
“I thought I did. I had hidden it inside the lining.”
“Who knew?”
“No one.”
“Did anyone open the suitcase?”
Elena looked uncertain.
“When I came back from Romania, one of the clasps was broken. I assumed it happened during travel.”
“And eight years later Sophie suddenly finds the tape?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Elena glanced toward Thomas.
“In the old linen room.”
Thomas frowned.
“The one beside the west stairwell?”
“Yes.”
“That room has been locked for years.”
Mrs. Caruso shook her head.
“Not locked anymore.”
Everyone turned toward her.
She seemed mildly annoyed that no one knew this.
“The pipes leaked in February. Maintenance moved everything out.”
Thomas looked baffled.
“I authorized that repair.”
“Then you should read your own paperwork,” she said.
Marco covered a smile with his hand.
Thomas ignored him.
“How did Sophie get in?”
“She follows the housekeeper when they collect spare cloths,” Elena explained. “Today she found a loose board under the bottom shelf.”
My eyes moved to the cassette.
“Inside the wall?”
Elena nodded.
“With the scarf.”
That changed everything.
The tape had not been sitting forgotten in a suitcase.
Someone had hidden it inside the estate.
The question was whether Alessandra had done it herself.
I stood.
“We’re playing it.”
Victor rose too.
“Luca.”
I looked at him.
“If you are about to tell me not to—”
“I’m not.”
He buttoned his jacket.
“I’m going to tell you the old television room still has a VHS player.”
Thomas blinked.
“It works?”
Victor looked offended.
“Of course it works.”
For the first time that night, I remembered why my father had trusted him.
Victor could turn even a family crisis into an equipment inventory.
We left the dining room together.
Not all twenty-three guests followed.
Some relatives had little connection to Alessandra and enough sense to understand this was no longer dinner entertainment.
Aunt Teresa came.
Marco came.
Victor and Thomas came.
Elena hesitated until I asked her to join us.
Mrs. Caruso stayed with Sophie.
The television room had not been used regularly since my father died.
It smelled faintly of cedar and old books.
A wide cabinet stood against the wall, containing technology from three different decades. Victor opened one door and revealed a black VCR beneath a newer media system.
Marco stared.
“You kept that?”
Victor gave him a dry look.
“I keep everything.”
I almost asked whether that included secrets.
I decided not to.
We needed answers more than another argument.
Thomas connected the machine.
Victor found the correct input.
Elena stood near the door, arms folded tightly.
I held the cassette for several seconds before inserting it.
Eight years.
My sister’s voice might be on that tape.
Her face.
Her last evening.
I had spent so long forcing myself to remember Alessandra as she had lived rather than how she had died.
The way she laughed at formal dinners when Father became too serious.
The habit she had of stealing food from my plate while insisting she was not hungry.
The postcards she sent from cities she claimed she hated and then secretly revisited.
I was afraid the tape would replace those memories.
Aunt Teresa seemed to understand.
She touched my arm.
“You don’t have to watch it tonight.”
I looked at her.
“Yes, I do.”
I pressed play.
Static filled the screen.
Then darkness.
A few seconds later, the image jumped.
We were looking at the west hallway.
My house.
Eight years earlier.
The timestamp read 11:43 p.m.
October 12.
The camera appeared to be sitting on a shelf, slightly crooked.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then Alessandra stepped into view.
I forgot how to breathe.
She wore dark trousers and a cream sweater. Her hair was tied back loosely. No coat.
Alive.
Moving.
Impatient.
She leaned close to the camera.
“If this recorded properly,” she whispered, “I owe Marco twenty euros.”
Marco’s face crumpled into a stunned smile.
“She borrowed my camera.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“I had one of those tiny camcorders. She asked me about the timer function that afternoon.”
On-screen, Alessandra disappeared.
The hallway remained empty.
We watched.
One minute.
Two.
Three.
Then footsteps.
My father entered the frame.
No one in the room moved.
Dominic Moretti looked older than I remembered from that year.
Not weak.
My father had never seemed weak.
But tired.
He stopped outside the library door.
A moment later, another person appeared.
My mother.
Teresa whispered, “Oh.”
My parents had publicly separated two months before that recording.
My mother had supposedly been living in Florence.
Yet there she was.
In our house.
At nearly midnight.
My father opened the library.
They went inside.
The camera could not see through the door.
But it could hear.
Not every word.
Only fragments.
My mother’s voice first.
“…not telling Luca…”
Then my father.
“…because he’ll make it his responsibility.”
My stomach tightened.
Marco looked at me.
I kept my eyes on the screen.
My mother again.
“…Alessandra already knows.”
My father said something too quiet to hear.
Then one clear sentence.
“She should never have found those letters.”
Teresa sat down.
I turned the volume higher.
A long patch of muffled conversation followed.
Then my mother said, “You cannot protect children forever by making decisions for them.”
My father answered, “They are not children.”
“No,” she said. “Which makes this worse.”
Then the library door opened.
My mother stepped out.
She looked angry.
Not frightened.
Not distraught.
Simply exhausted in the particular way a person looks after repeating an argument too many times.
My father followed.
“Clara.”
She turned.
Even after all these years, seeing them together stirred something painful in me.
Their marriage had ended so completely that I had convinced myself it had been broken for years.
But there was tenderness in the way my father said her name.
Not romantic tenderness.
Something older.
More complicated.
“You have until morning,” my mother told him.
“For what?”
“To tell Luca.”
The screen flickered.
The image dissolved into static.
Then returned.
The hallway was empty.
The timestamp now read 12:07 a.m.
Alessandra appeared.
She walked directly toward the camera.
For a moment, she stared into the lens.
Then she whispered, “Well.”
She gave a little humorless laugh.
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
My heart hammered.
She sat on the floor beneath the camera.
Only part of her face remained visible.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe nothing. That’s usually our family’s favorite strategy. Wait until something becomes impossible to ignore.”
Teresa let out a soft sound.
Alessandra continued.
“Luca, if you ever see this, don’t assume the worst.”
I leaned closer.
She was speaking to me.
Eight years across time, and she was speaking to me.
“I know you,” she said. “You’ll hear one secret and start looking for ten crimes.”
Marco looked away.
Despite everything, I nearly laughed.
That was exactly what I had been doing.
Alessandra smiled faintly at the camera.
“Dad isn’t hiding what you think he’s hiding. Mom isn’t either.”
She looked over her shoulder.
Then back.
“The letters are about the company.”
Victor straightened.
Alessandra lowered her voice.
“And about Grandfather.”
My grandfather Carlo had died before I turned twenty.
Founder of Moretti Maritime.
A difficult man even in the most flattering stories.
“Dad found out something years ago,” Alessandra said. “Something about how Grandfather bought the first shipping warehouse.”
Victor whispered, “No.”
I looked at him.
He shook his head.
“Keep watching.”
Alessandra continued.
“The property didn’t belong to him.”
Thomas sank slowly into a chair.
“It belonged to another family. Or part of it did. I don’t understand all the documents yet. There was some agreement after the flood in 1978. Grandfather promised to repay them when the business recovered.”
She looked frustrated.
“Apparently it recovered.”
Marco murmured, “That’s an understatement.”
“But the repayment never happened,” Alessandra said. “Dad discovered the letters when he took over. He tried to find the family. Mom helped. They found one surviving daughter, but she refused money.”
I felt strangely disoriented.
This was not the secret I had expected.
It was smaller.
And somehow larger.
Not murder.
Not betrayal in the dramatic way fear invents betrayal.
A debt.
An old promise.
A foundation laid on something unfinished.
“Dad wanted to create a trust,” Alessandra said. “Quietly. Mom said quietly was the problem.”
On the screen, she rolled her eyes.
“They have been fighting about this for years, apparently, which makes their entire marriage much more interesting than I realized.”
Teresa smiled through tears.
“That child.”
Alessandra continued.
“The woman has grandchildren. Dad has been paying education expenses anonymously through a foundation. He thinks that settles the debt without embarrassing anyone. Mom thinks hiding the truth turns generosity into another secret.”
I looked toward Victor.
His face had gone pale.
“You knew.”
He nodded once.
“My father told you?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Almost all of it.”
“Why?”
“Because I administered the foundation.”
I stared at him.
Before I could speak, Alessandra continued.
“The family name is Bell.”
Elena gasped.
Everyone looked at her.
“What?” I asked.
She put a hand over her mouth.
“Bell?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head slowly.
“My husband’s mother was Anna Bell.”
I felt the room tilt.
Marco stood.
“Sophie’s last name.”
Elena nodded.
“Bellini is mine. Sophie’s father was Daniel Bell.”
No one spoke.
Elena looked at the television.
“Daniel died before Sophie was born. His mother passed away years earlier. He never knew much about her family.”
I stared at her.
“How did you come to work here?”
“An agency.”
“Which agency?”
“I don’t remember. It was long ago.”
Thomas was already thinking.
“I’ll have the file.”
But Elena shook her head.
“No. Wait.”
She looked almost frightened by the coincidence, though nothing threatening had happened.
“I remember something.”
“What?”
“When I first arrived, Mr. Moretti—your father—asked my surname.”
“Bellini?”
“My married name then was Elena Bell.”
The room went still.
“He asked whether my husband’s family came from Trieste.”
Aunt Teresa closed her eyes.
“Oh, Dominic.”
I understood before Elena finished.
“My husband did,” she said.
My father had known.
Maybe not everything.
But enough to suspect.
And he had never told her.
On the television, Alessandra’s recorded voice continued.
“There’s something else I don’t understand.”
We all turned back.
She held up a folder.
“The payment records stop three years ago.”
May you like
Victor whispered something I couldn’t hear.
On-screen, Alessandra frowned.
