Chapter 4 - The Grave With His Brother’s Name
Adrian evacuated the main house in under four minutes.
Sofia went with Teresa through an underground service corridor connecting the mansion to the old carriage house. Marco sent two trusted men ahead and sealed the passage behind them.
Victor stayed.
Adrian noticed.
“You can leave.”
Victor shook his head.
“If Luca is alive because I helped him disappear, then whatever is happening now belongs to me too.”
“That doesn’t make me trust you.”
“I know.”
The first intruder appeared on the thermal camera near the greenhouse.
Marco counted three.
Then five.
No visible firearms.
That mattered.
They were not coming to start a war.
They were coming to search.
Adrian gave one instruction.
“Take them alive if possible.”
Twenty minutes later, four men were detained near the east wing.
The fifth escaped.
None carried identification.
One had a tattoo behind his ear.
A small bell.
Bellandi.
But when Marco questioned them, they knew almost nothing.
They had been paid electronically.
Told to retrieve a purple backpack.
No names.
No explanation.
That meant Samuel Bellandi was careful.
Adrian could respect careful.
He could not forgive threatening a child.
By midnight, the estate was secure again.
Sofia slept beside Teresa in the carriage house.
Victor sat alone in the study.
Adrian stood before a fireplace staring at Luca’s photograph.
Four months ago.
Vermont.
Alive.
He should have felt joy.
Instead he felt robbed.
Six birthdays.
Six Christmases.
Six anniversaries of a death that never happened.
He had stood beside Luca’s grave every year.
Sometimes alone.
Sometimes with flowers.
Once drunk.
Once after their father died.
He had spoken to a brother who was never there.
At 1:17 a.m., Adrian picked up his coat.
Marco looked up.
“Where are you going?”
“The cemetery.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Marco studied him.
Then grabbed his own coat.
They drove through rain.
St. Michael’s Cemetery sat on a hill beyond the city, old iron gates opening toward rows of granite stones silvered by streetlights.
Luca’s grave was near the family mausoleum.
Adrian knew the path without thinking.
LUCA ANTHONY DELUCA.
1986–2020.
BELOVED SON. BELOVED BROTHER.
Adrian stared at it.
Then laughed once.
A bitter sound.
Marco remained several feet away.
Adrian touched the granite.
“You selfish bastard.”
Rain ran over his hand.
“You let me talk to a rock for six years.”
No answer came.
Of course.
Yet for the first time the grave felt exactly like what it was.
Empty of the person Adrian had loved.
He looked toward the dark cemetery road.
“Get a court order.”
Marco frowned.
“For what?”
“To open the grave.”
By noon the next day, Adrian had lawyers working.
Money accelerated bureaucracy.
A family request, irregularities in identification records, newly discovered evidence.
By late afternoon, an exhumation was approved.
Victor protested.
“You don’t need to do this.”
“I do.”
“You already know Luca is alive.”
“I want to know who we buried.”
Victor became silent.
That silence interested Adrian.
“You know.”
“No.”
“You hesitated.”
“I’m remembering.”
“What?”
Victor looked exhausted.
“The night of the fire.”
Adrian waited.
“There was another man at the warehouse.”
“Who?”
“A driver.”
“For whom?”
“Your father.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“Name.”
“Thomas Rainer.”
Adrian knew the name.
Everyone in the family did.
Rainer had disappeared the same night Luca died.
At the time, people assumed he fled after causing the fire.
“You think we buried Rainer?”
“I think it’s possible.”
The grave opened the following morning.
Adrian stood beneath a black umbrella while workers raised the coffin.
The forensic team transported the remains privately.
By evening, dental records were being rechecked.
At 9:40 p.m., Marco walked into Adrian’s study holding a folder.
“They got a preliminary match.”
Adrian stood.
“To Rainer?”
Marco shook his head.
“No.”
Adrian took the folder.
The remains belonged to a man named Nicholas Vale.
Adrian had never heard the name.
“Who is he?”
“According to public records? Nobody important. Petty fraud charges. Worked temporary construction.”
“That doesn’t explain why his dental records were substituted for Luca’s.”
“No.”
Marco placed another page down.
“But this might.”
Nicholas Vale had a sister.
Her name was Angela Vale.
She had worked for twelve years at the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Including the year Luca supposedly died.
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“Find her.”
Marco had already tried.
“She disappeared three days after the fire.”
“Dead?”
“No record.”
“Then someone paid her.”
“Probably.”
Adrian thought of the ledger.
The deeper he looked, the larger the lie became.
Victor arrived an hour later.
Adrian showed him Nicholas Vale’s file.
Victor looked genuinely surprised.
“I didn’t know.”
“Then who arranged the dental match?”
“Your father.”
“Through whom?”
“I was never told.”
Adrian leaned back.
“My father knew Luca was alive. You knew. The medical examiner was compromised. A stranger’s body was buried under my brother’s name.”
“Yes.”
“And you still expect me to believe none of you knew who betrayed Luca?”
Victor looked at him.
“I think your father knew.”
Adrian went still.
“Why?”
“Because three weeks before he died, he asked me a strange question.”
“What question?”
Victor took a breath.
“He asked whether I believed a father could forgive a child who destroyed his family.”
Adrian stared.
“Which child?”
“He didn’t say.”
Adrian had always assumed he knew his family’s shape.
Two sons.
One father.
One mother.
No daughters.
No hidden branches.
No missing names.
Then Marco’s phone buzzed.
He read the message.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“We found Angela Vale.”
“Where?”
“Not where.”
Marco turned the phone toward him.
“When.”
Angela Vale had died eighteen months earlier.
But before her death, she had given a sworn statement to an attorney.
A statement sealed under instructions that it could only be released if someone ever exhumed the body in Luca DeLuca’s grave.
Adrian felt the hairs on his arms rise.
“Get it.”
Twenty minutes later, the document arrived.
The first page contained a confession.
Angela had falsified the dental match.
She admitted receiving $250,000.
She admitted knowing Nicholas Vale’s body had been mislabeled.
And she identified the person who paid her.
Adrian read the name once.
Then again.
Victor came closer.
“What does it say?”
Adrian looked up.
The person who arranged Luca DeLuca’s fake death had not been his father.
May you like
It had been Adrian’s mother.
And according to Angela Vale’s statement, Mrs. DeLuca had done it because she believed one of her own sons was going to murder the other.
