Chapter 10
The major betrayal had started before Lorenzo died.
ORCHARD was not simply a theft account.
It was a shadow fund Victor created twenty years earlier to keep certain Bellandi operations independent from the rest of the family.
At first, the money had been used for emergencies.
Legal defense.
Widows.
Medical bills.
Protection when legitimate accounts were frozen.
Lorenzo knew about it.
So did Victor.
For years, it served a real purpose.
Then Victor began treating it as his private power base.
Nolan followed.
Money moved into businesses they controlled.
Loyal men were paid outside official structures.
Votes were influenced.
Debts purchased.
By the time Lorenzo discovered how far it had gone, exposing ORCHARD would not merely embarrass Victor.
It would destroy the network that made him powerful.
Lorenzo planned to remove Serafina temporarily from the books because her credentials had already been used without her knowledge.
He was not abandoning her.
He was trying to prevent Victor from framing her.
Then he intended to take Serafina and Mia away from the estate until the internal fight ended.
Victor found out.
The night Lorenzo died, Victor and Nolan followed him.
They did not cut his brakes.
The truth was colder.
They knew the replacement brake line had been improperly fitted.
The mechanic had called Nolan that afternoon warning about a pressure issue and asking for the car back.
Nolan never told Lorenzo.
Victor collected the car before the warning could be entered properly into the system.
Then he let Lorenzo drive it.
When Lorenzo left with the ORCHARD evidence, they followed.
Victor wanted him stopped.
Nolan wanted the files.
Neither intended, according to the surviving communications, to send the car over a mountain.
But when Lorenzo called from the road saying the brakes felt wrong, Victor told him:
“Keep driving. There’s a turnout ahead.”
There was no safe turnout ahead.
There was a descending curve.
Lorenzo lost the brakes.
Victor and Nolan watched the car go through the guardrail.
Then they took the drive containing ORCHARD from the wreck before emergency crews arrived.
Years later, Victor used Serafina’s archived voice and credentials to continue authorizations.
He kept Anthony silent by threatening to expose debts connected to Anthony’s son.
And when Serafina chose to have Leo using the embryos she and Lorenzo created, Victor panicked.
A son carrying Lorenzo’s name, raised by Serafina, threatened the future Victor wanted for Nolan.
That was why Nolan hated Leo with a cruelty that never made sense.
Leo was not merely Serafina’s child.
To Nolan, he was Lorenzo returning to the family.
Serafina sat alone after Claire finished reconstructing the evidence.
Her nails pressed crescents into her palm.
She had spent seven years believing Victor saved her after Lorenzo died.
He organized the funeral.
Held Mia when Serafina could not get out of bed.
Taught her the finances.
Protected her while she grieved.
All while knowing why Lorenzo never came home.
May you like
The betrayal was not that Victor had been her enemy.
It was that he had become the person she trusted most after helping create the reason she needed someone to trust.
