Chapter 6 - The Last Night of Thomas Moretti
The first thing Rafael learned about his father's death was that the official story contained fewer details than he remembered.
The second was that someone had deliberately removed the missing details.
By nine the following morning, Claire Bennett had obtained the original death certificate, the hospital records, the insurance correspondence, and the archived report prepared by the family physician. Most documents were routine. Thomas Moretti had suffered from hypertension, had a history of cardiac complications, and had been under considerable professional stress.
But one page was missing.
The toxicology report.
“Is that unusual?” Rafael asked.
Claire sat across from him in the conference room, her notes arranged in neat columns.
“Not necessarily. If the attending physician believed the death was natural, a toxicology examination might never have been ordered. But the insurance correspondence refers to laboratory findings that aren't included in the file.”
Rafael frowned.
“What findings?”
“That is what we need to establish.”
She turned the next page.
“The report was prepared by a private laboratory that closed eleven years ago. Its records were transferred to another company, which was subsequently acquired. The archive may still exist.”
“And if it doesn't?”
“Then we investigate why it disappeared.”
Rafael looked through the glass wall toward his office.
Elena was speaking on the telephone, one hand resting against the desk. She had insisted on helping with the investigation, but she had also made it clear that she would not return to her former position.
He had agreed.
It was a small concession, but it mattered. He could no longer pretend that offering her a job was the same as offering her a future.
“There's something else,” Claire continued.
Rafael returned his attention to her.
“The insurance company received an amended claim three days after your father's death. The amendment changed the beneficiary allocation and redirected a substantial payment into a family trust.”
“Who authorized it?”
“Your uncle.”
Rafael stared at the document.
“Did my father know?”
“We don't know.”
“Could the amendment have been legitimate?”
“Yes. But the timing warrants scrutiny, especially if the toxicology report contained information relevant to the claim.”
Rafael leaned back.
He remembered his father's funeral, the gray sky above the cemetery, and Victor standing beside him with a steady hand on his shoulder.
He remembered being told that grief had made him vulnerable, that he needed to concentrate on the company, that his father would have wanted him to move forward.
Victor had arranged the funeral, handled the paperwork, and protected Rafael from the financial details.
At the time, it had seemed like kindness.
Now Rafael wondered how much of his life had been shaped by information he had never been allowed to see.
“Find the laboratory records,” he said. “And get me the original trust documents.”
Claire closed her notebook.
“I'll need time.”
“Take it.”
She studied him.
“You understand that if this investigation uncovers evidence of criminal conduct, it may affect the entire company.”
“Yes.”
“Your position. Your reputation. Your family's remaining assets.”
“I understand.”
“And if the evidence points toward your uncle?”
Rafael looked down at the documents.
“Then I will deal with it.”
Claire did not challenge him.
She had spent enough time with powerful men to recognize the difference between someone who wanted the truth and someone who wanted a particular answer.
For the first time, Rafael seemed prepared to accept either.
***
Elena met Adrian Cole at a small café near the university district.
She had chosen the location herself and arranged for a friend of Claire's to sit nearby. Adrian had agreed to speak with the investigators, but he refused to enter the Moretti headquarters until he had legal protection.
He arrived carrying a battered leather folder.
“You look tired,” he said.
“So does everyone connected to this family.”
Adrian smiled faintly and ordered tea.
Elena placed the anonymous messages on the table.
“Someone wants us to investigate Thomas Moretti's death.”
Adrian read them.
When he finished, his expression had changed.
“Did you know Thomas?”
“Only through company records. He died two years after Matteo.”
“Did he have anything to do with the maritime division?”
“He founded it.”
Adrian opened his folder and removed a photocopy of a handwritten ledger.
“Matteo gave me this three days before the accident. He told me it contained a list of payments approved by his father, but he didn't believe all of them were legitimate.”
Elena examined the page.
The entries were dated over several years. Some corresponded to known corporate transactions. Others referred to abbreviated company names she did not recognize.
One payment appeared repeatedly.
A monthly transfer to a company called Northbridge Medical Consulting.
“Why would a maritime division pay a medical consulting firm?” she asked.
“That's what Matteo wanted to know.”
“Did he investigate it?”
“He discovered that Northbridge had no registered medical staff, no hospital contracts, and no physical office. Its registered address belonged to a law firm that represented Victor Moretti.”
Elena looked up.
“Did he confront him?”
“Not directly. Matteo believed someone was watching his communications. He was trying to identify the people involved before he spoke to Rafael.”
“Why Rafael?”
“Because Matteo trusted his brother. He believed Rafael would help him expose the operation once he understood the evidence.”
Elena thought of the letter she had found.
I tried to speak to you. I couldn't reach you.
“What happened to the payments after Thomas died?”
Adrian turned several pages.
“They stopped for six months. Then they resumed under a different company name.”
“Who authorized them?”
“Victor.”
Elena felt a familiar coldness settle in her stomach.
“Could the payments have been used to bribe someone?”
“Possibly. Or to conceal another activity. We never found the final recipient.”
“Did Matteo?”
Adrian hesitated.
“I think he did.”
“Why?”
“Because on the night he died, he called me and said he had found the person receiving the money. He sounded frightened. Not panicked, exactly. More like someone who had finally understood the scale of the problem.”
“What did he say?”
Adrian looked toward the window.
“He said, 'It's not just Victor.'”
Elena waited.
“He said someone else in the family was involved. Someone we had never suspected.”
A car passed outside, sending a wash of sunlight across the table.
Elena lowered her voice.
“Who?”
“I don't know. Matteo never said.”
“Could he have meant Thomas?”
Adrian's expression tightened.
“His father was already dead by then.”
“Could the person have been involved in his death?”
“That's possible.”
Elena looked down at the ledger.
For the first time, the investigation seemed less like a straight line leading toward Victor and more like a network of decisions made over many years. Money had moved, records had disappeared, and people had died before they could explain what they knew.
She thought of Rafael.
He had spent twelve years believing his father and brother had died of unrelated causes.
If the two deaths were connected, the truth would force him to reconsider not only his uncle, but the entire history of his family.
“Adrian,” she said, “I need you to tell Claire everything you know.”
“I will.”
“Even if it implicates someone you once trusted.”
Adrian folded the ledger.
“Especially then.”
***
Vivienne Sinclair arrived at the Moretti headquarters that afternoon carrying a box of documents.
She had spent the previous night arguing with her father and most of the morning reviewing records she had never been expected to understand. The more she examined the Sinclair family's finances, the more she realized that the marriage arrangement had been designed to solve a problem her father had concealed from her.
Sinclair Holdings was deeply indebted.
Several of its largest loans were secured against assets that had already been pledged elsewhere. A successful alliance with the Moretti family would have strengthened the company's credit position and reassured its lenders.
But the documents also revealed a series of transfers between Sinclair subsidiaries and companies connected to Victor's maritime division.
Vivienne had not authorized them.
She had not even known they existed.
She asked to see Rafael.
His assistant informed her that he was in a meeting, but she refused to leave.
When Rafael finally came downstairs, he looked as though he had been working without a break.
“You said you would cooperate,” he said.
“I am.”
She handed him the box.
“These are our internal financial records for the past five years. Some of the transfers appear to involve companies your uncle controlled.”
Rafael opened the first folder.
“Why bring them to me?”
“Because my father has spent years telling me that marriage is a responsibility, that family loyalty requires sacrifice, and that I should stop asking questions when the answers become inconvenient.”
She held his gaze.
“I am beginning to think that the people who use the word loyalty most often are the ones who expect everyone else to pay for their decisions.”
Rafael looked through the documents.
“You could be putting your family's company at risk.”
“It is already at risk.”
“Your father will blame you.”
“He already does.”
She smiled without humor.
“I spent my life believing that being chosen by a powerful man would mean I had finally earned my place in the world. Then I discovered that the marriage was never about me.”
Rafael closed the folder.
“I am sorry.”
“Don't be. You didn't arrange it.”
“No. But I agreed to it without asking whether you wanted it.”
Vivienne studied him.
“That may be the most honest thing you've ever said to me.”
For a moment, the tension between them eased.
She was no longer his fiancée, and he was no longer the man she had been promised to marry. They could speak without pretending that affection existed where there was only obligation.
“There is something else,” she said.
“What?”
“My father met Victor two nights before your engagement party. They argued. I heard them from the corridor.”
“About what?”
“I couldn't hear everything. But I heard your father's name.”
Rafael's expression changed.
“What exactly did they say?”
Vivienne closed her eyes, searching her memory.
“My father said, 'If the old report comes back, neither of us survives it.' Victor told him the report was gone.”
She opened her eyes.
“Then Victor said something I will never forget.”
“What?”
“He said, 'It was gone once. It can disappear again.'”
Rafael looked at the box in his hands.
The engagement, the debt, the old shipping records, the missing toxicology report.
For the first time, the connections seemed to form a coherent pattern.
Victor had not simply been protecting a business empire.
He had been protecting a secret.
And he had arranged Rafael's marriage to ensure that the people who might expose it remained dependent on one another.
“Thank you,” Rafael said.
Vivienne nodded.
“Find the truth, Rafael. Whatever it costs.”
She turned to leave.
At the elevator, she paused.
“And for what it's worth, Elena was right to walk away.”
Rafael did not answer.
He was thinking about the woman upstairs, the one who had left him because she could no longer survive on fragments of affection.
For the first time, he understood that the investigation was not the only thing he needed to put right.
***
The laboratory records arrived two days later.
Claire had located an archived database belonging to the company that acquired the old laboratory. Most of the files were incomplete, but one document had survived: an invoice for a specialized toxicology examination ordered on the morning Thomas Moretti died.
The invoice included the name of the physician who requested it.
Dr. Samuel Whitmore.
Rafael recognized the name immediately.
Whitmore had been the family's physician for nearly twenty years. He had attended Thomas's funeral and later signed several of the medical documents connected to Matteo's accident.
“He's retired,” Claire explained. “He lives outside Meridian. I have arranged an interview.”
“Has he agreed to speak?”
“He has.”
Rafael looked at the invoice.
“Why would he order a toxicology examination if he believed my father died of natural causes?”
“That is the question.”
The interview took place the following morning in a small house overlooking a wooded garden.
Dr. Whitmore was seventy-four, with thin white hair and hands that trembled slightly when he poured tea. He had agreed to speak only after Claire assured him that the conversation would be documented and that he would be given an opportunity to consult his lawyer.
Rafael sat across from him.
“Did my father die of a heart attack?”
Whitmore looked at the window.
“His heart stopped.”
“That isn't the same question.”
“No,” the doctor admitted. “It isn't.”
Rafael felt his pulse quicken.
“What did you find?”
Whitmore folded his hands.
“Your father had a history of cardiac disease. But the symptoms he displayed that evening were unusual. He experienced sudden confusion, severe weakness, and difficulty breathing. I suspected an acute medical event, but I could not rule out the possibility of an external substance contributing to his condition.”
“Did you order a toxicology examination?”
“Yes.”
“What did it show?”
The doctor looked at Claire.
She nodded for him to continue.
“The preliminary results indicated an unusual compound in his blood. The laboratory could not identify it conclusively without further testing.”
“Was it poison?”
“I cannot say that. The concentration was low, and your father's medical history complicated the interpretation.”
“Then why was the report removed?”
Whitmore's hands began to tremble more visibly.
“Because I was instructed to withdraw it.”
“By whom?”
The doctor closed his eyes.
“Victor Moretti.”
Rafael stood so abruptly that his chair scraped against the floor.
“Why?”
“Victor said your father had been taking an experimental medication under specialist supervision. He claimed the substance was part of the treatment and that publishing an incomplete result would cause unnecessary scandal.”
“Did you believe him?”
“At the time, I did.”
“And afterward?”
Whitmore looked down.
“Afterward, I received a letter from your father's lawyer informing me that the matter had been reviewed and that no further action was required.”
Rafael stared at him.
“You never questioned it?”
“I was ashamed. I had been treating your father for years. I should have insisted on a complete investigation.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“No.”
The answer came quietly.
Rafael turned toward the window, trying to control the anger rising inside him.
He had spent twelve years blaming himself for failing to answer Matteo's calls. Now he was learning that his father's death might not have been natural, that the evidence had been suppressed, and that the people responsible for protecting his family had chosen silence.
“Was the substance connected to the maritime division?” he asked.
Whitmore shook his head.
“I don't know.”
“Could it have been administered without his knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“Could it have caused his death?”
“I cannot establish that from the available information.”
Rafael closed his eyes.
He wanted a name. A motive. A definitive answer.
Instead, he had another unanswered question.
Claire thanked the doctor and arranged for his statement to be formally recorded.
Outside, Rafael stood beside the car and stared at the road.
“I need to speak to Victor.”
Claire shook her head.
“Not yet. We have a witness statement, but we need corroborating evidence. If you confront him now, he may destroy whatever remains.”
“He has already destroyed enough.”
“Then don't give him another opportunity.”
Rafael looked at her.
She was right.
For twelve years, he had allowed anger to make him reckless and grief to make him obedient.
He would not let either one decide what happened next.
***
That evening, Elena received a call from her mother.
Margaret had been taken to the hospital after experiencing chest discomfort.
The doctors believed it was stress-related, but they wanted to observe her overnight.
Elena left the office immediately.
She found her mother resting in a private room, looking annoyed by the monitors attached to her arm.
“I told them I was fine,” Margaret said.
“You also told me you were fine when you couldn't walk up the stairs.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I was younger.”
Elena laughed despite herself.
She sat beside the bed and held her mother's hand.
For the first time in several days, the investigation seemed distant. The money, the missing reports, and the Moretti family could wait. Her mother was alive, and Elena wanted to remember what it felt like to sit beside her without wondering whether another threat would arrive.
Margaret watched her.
“Have you spoken to Rafael?”
“Today.”
“And?”
Elena looked toward the window.
“He's trying.”
“Is he?”
“Yes.”
“Then let him try. But don't make promises you aren't ready to keep.”
Elena nodded.
A quiet knock sounded at the door.
Rafael stood in the corridor, holding a paper bag and looking deeply uncomfortable.
Elena stepped outside.
“What are you doing here?”
“I heard your mother was admitted.”
“Who told you?”
“Claire mentioned it when she called about the investigation. I asked whether a visit would be unwelcome.”
“And?”
“She said I should ask you.”
Elena looked at him for a long moment.
“You could have called.”
“I could have.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because I wanted to give you the option of saying no without having to explain yourself.”
She looked down at the bag.
“What is that?”
“Dinner.”
“I can feed myself.”
“I know.”
“Then why bring it?”
“Because I thought you might forget to eat.”
The words settled between them.
Elena remembered all the evenings she had brought him food, all the times he had worked through exhaustion, and all the small acts of care she had performed without ever asking whether he noticed.
Now he was trying to offer one back.
It was not enough to repair three years of imbalance.
But it was something.
“You can come in,” she said.
Rafael entered the room quietly.
He greeted Margaret, introduced himself properly despite having paid for her surgery months earlier, and asked how she was feeling. He did not mention the investigation. He did not offer to transfer her to another hospital or arrange additional specialists.
He simply sat beside the bed and listened.
Margaret asked him about his work, his childhood, and whether he had eaten that day.
Rafael answered every question.
At one point, she looked at him over the rim of her water glass.
“You know, Mr. Moretti, my daughter is very good at taking care of people.”
“I know.”
“No. I don't think you do.”
Elena closed her eyes.
“Mom.”
Margaret ignored her.
“She will keep giving long after she has nothing left. You must never mistake that for permission to take everything she offers.”
Rafael lowered his gaze.
“I understand.”
“Good. Because she deserves someone who notices when she is tired.”
For once, Rafael did not attempt to defend himself.
He simply nodded.
When they left the hospital, he walked Elena to the entrance.
“Your mother is extraordinary,” he said.
“She has opinions.”
“So do you.”
Elena almost smiled.
Then she looked at him seriously.
“Rafael, I don't know what happens between us after this investigation.”
“I know.”
“I can't promise that I'll come back.”
“I won't ask you to.”
“And I can't promise that loving you will ever feel easy.”
He looked at her.
“I don't expect it to.”
The answer was so different from what she had feared that she found herself searching his face for the hidden demand.
There was none.
Only uncertainty, and a kind of honesty she had rarely seen from him.
For the first time, Elena wondered whether the man she had loved from a distance might finally be learning how to stand beside her.
Then her phone vibrated.
A message from Claire appeared.
We have a development. The original toxicology report has been located.
A second message followed.
It identifies a substance that was also found in the medical records of another person connected to the Moretti family.
Elena looked up at Rafael.
He had received the same message.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Rafael asked, “Who else?”
Elena read the final line.
May you like
The name was unmistakable.
Matteo Moretti.
