Chapter 5 - The Letters That Never Arrived
Alessandro read the first letter standing up.
By the third, he had sat down.
By the seventh, Matteo quietly left the office.
The letters covered four months.
Camille’s handwriting changed across them.
At first it was controlled.
Then frightened.
Then angry.
Finally exhausted.
She had written about the pregnancy.
About hospital appointments.
About hearing contradictory reports concerning Alessandro’s condition.
About being told he could not receive visitors.
About leaving messages every day.
She had begged him to respond.
Not to return.
Not to marry her.
Not to promise anything.
Simply to tell her he had received the message.
The final letter was the shortest.
Alessandro, I don’t understand what happened to us. Vittorio says you are awake and know about the baby. He says the letter he gave me came from you. I want to believe he is lying, but you have given me nothing else to believe. I will not bring a child into a life where she is treated as a secret or an inconvenience. I am going home to France. If you ever wanted us, you knew where to find me. Camille.
Alessandro remained still for a long time.
Then Matteo reentered.
“I found the person who sent the copies.”
“Who?”
“She requested a meeting.”
“Name.”
“Isabella Conti.”
Alessandro frowned.
He knew the name.
She had worked as Vittorio’s executive secretary during Alessandro’s coma.
Retired five years ago.
“Where?”
“Church on East Seventy-Second. Noon.”
“Why a church?”
“She said cameras make her nervous.”
At twelve precisely, Alessandro entered the church alone.
Isabella sat in the last pew.
She was nearly seventy, silver-haired, small and visibly frightened.
“You look like your father,” she said when he sat beside her.
“I’m told that often.”
“Your father frightened me too.”
“What do you know?”
She looked toward the altar.
“I should have told you years ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was afraid.”
“Of Vittorio?”
“Yes.”
Alessandro kept his voice even.
“Start at the beginning.”
Isabella folded her hands.
“When you were in the hospital, Mr. Vittorio moved his office into Vitali Tower. Everyone believed you might die.”
“I know.”
“He began signing documents under emergency authority.”
“What documents?”
“Mostly business matters at first.”
“And later?”
She swallowed.
“He changed the family trust.”
Alessandro’s attention sharpened.
“That would require my signature.”
“It had one.”
“Forged?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who prepared it?”
“Paolo Ricci.”
The dead assistant.
Again.
Isabella continued.
“At the time, I thought it was temporary. Mr. Vittorio said the board needed certainty.”
“What did the change do?”
“If you died without a legally recognized heir, control of the primary family trust transferred to Vittorio.”
Alessandro understood immediately.
“And if I had a child?”
“The trust remained in your bloodline.”
Sophie.
There it was.
Not sentiment.
Not jealousy.
Money.
Power.
Control.
Camille’s pregnancy had threatened Vittorio’s path to the entire Vitali structure.
“But I lived,” Alessandro said.
“Yes.”
“So the transfer never happened.”
“No.”
“Then why keep Sophie hidden after I woke?”
Isabella looked at him.
“Because you were not supposed to remain in control.”
A chill moved through the room.
“What does that mean?”
“I heard things.”
“What things?”
“Paolo arguing with Vittorio.”
“About?”
“Your medication.”
Alessandro’s face became unreadable.
“Continue.”
“They thought I had left for the evening. I heard Paolo say the doctors were reducing your sedation too quickly. Vittorio told him not to worry because someone would ‘correct it.’”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did they?”
“I don’t know.”
Alessandro remembered months of confusion.
Doctors changing.
Medication adjustments.
Vittorio insisting certain physicians were the best available.
He had trusted him.
The realization burned.
“Why send me the letters now?”
Isabella began twisting a ring on her finger.
“Because Vittorio called me three days ago.”
“Why?”
“He wanted old records destroyed.”
“What records?”
“Boxes I stored after retirement.”
“Why now?”
“He asked specifically about Camille Laurent.”
Alessandro stared at her.
“He knows she’s here.”
“I believe so.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the flight seats?”
“That was me.”
Alessandro went still.
“You?”
Isabella finally looked directly at him.
“My nephew works in travel administration for one of your companies. I asked him to make the changes.”
“Why?”
“Because if I contacted you directly, Vittorio might discover it.”
“So you placed Sophie beside me.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who she was?”
“I suspected.”
“How?”
Isabella’s eyes filled.
“I typed some of Camille’s letters before Vittorio ordered everything removed from your office. I knew the dates.”
Alessandro looked toward the altar.
An elderly woman lit a candle near the front.
Isabella whispered, “I thought if you saw the child yourself, nobody could make you ignore it.”
He was angry.
But not at her.
“You gambled with a child.”
“Yes.”
“And if I had reacted badly?”
“I watched you when you were younger.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“You loved Camille.”
The statement was simple.
True.
Isabella reached into her handbag.
“There is something else.”
She handed him an old storage receipt.
A warehouse in Queens.
Unit 318.
“What’s there?”
“Paolo’s archive.”
“I thought he died.”
“He did.”
“Then why do you have this?”
“He gave it to me two weeks before.”
“Why?”
“He said if anything happened to him, I should wait.”
“For what?”
“For Camille to come back to New York.”
The timing struck Alessandro.
Paolo had known.
Perhaps more than anyone.
“When did he give this to you?”
“Four years ago.”
“And you waited four years?”
“I didn’t know where Camille was.”
“You could have contacted me.”
Isabella flinched.
“I know.”
Alessandro controlled his anger.
Fear made people slow.
He understood that better than most.
“Did Paolo say what was inside?”
“No.”
“Did he say why Camille mattered?”
Isabella nodded.
“One sentence.”
“What?”
“He said the attack on Mott Street wasn’t really about Alessandro.”
Alessandro leaned closer.
“Then who was it about?”
Isabella’s voice dropped.
“He said it was about who would control the Vitali name after Alessandro.”
An hour later, Alessandro and Matteo stood outside Storage Unit 318.
The lock had already been broken.
Matteo drew in a breath.
“We’re late.”
They entered.
Boxes had been overturned.
Papers littered the floor.
Someone had searched everything.
Alessandro crouched.
A crushed folder lay near the back wall.
Empty.
Then Matteo noticed a small flash drive taped underneath a metal shelf.
“Whoever came here missed something.”
They returned to the car.
The drive contained seventeen encrypted files.
Most required passwords.
One opened immediately.
A scanned hospital document appeared.
Alessandro stared at it.
It was a medical authorization from the night of the Mott Street attack.
At the bottom was Vittorio Vitali’s signature.
Above it, under treatment instructions, were the words:
Do not release patient condition to Camille Laurent under any circumstances.
The document had been signed thirty-two minutes after Alessandro arrived at the hospital.
Thirty-two minutes.
Before anyone knew whether he would survive.
Before Camille even knew where he had been taken.
Vittorio’s plan had begun that same night.
But when Matteo opened the metadata, they discovered something even stranger.
The document had not been created by Vittorio.
It had been forwarded to him.
From the email account of someone Alessandro trusted even more.
May you like
His own father.
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