Chapter 2
The rally ended within twenty minutes.
Guests were politely escorted toward the front drive while Moretti staff photographed damaged equipment and collected witness names.
Raffaele took Lily upstairs to the family quarters.
She refused to let go of Adrian.
So Adrian came too.
Vanessa was not allowed inside.
Raffaele’s older house manager, Denise Carver, changed Lily into pajamas while Adrian sat on the floor outside her bedroom.
Raffaele stood in the hallway.
“You knew something was going to happen today.”
Adrian looked up.
“No.”
“You said those men were waiting for you.”
“They were.”
“How would you know?”
Adrian rubbed his palms against his trousers.
He was fifteen, but sometimes Raffaele forgot how young that actually was.
Adrian’s father, Matteo, had been Raffaele’s younger brother.
After Matteo died in a motorcycle accident four years earlier, Adrian had moved into the Moretti estate permanently.
Raffaele had promised his brother’s grave that the boy would never be treated like an obligation.
Yet Adrian was looking at him now like someone deciding how much truth was safe to tell.
“Talk.”
Adrian glanced toward Lily’s room.
“I’ve been helping with rally paperwork.”
Raffaele frowned.
“For school service hours.”
He remembered now.
Adrian’s high school required community-service credits. The Moretti Children’s Mobility Fund, which bought adaptive equipment for injured and disabled kids, qualified.
“What paperwork?”
“Donation receipts. Merchandise totals. Vendor lists.”
“And?”
“Some numbers didn’t match.”
Raffaele’s attention sharpened.
Adrian pulled out his phone.
“I asked Grant about it last week.”
Raffaele stared at him.
“You confronted a forty-three-year-old man about financial records by yourself?”
“I asked a question.”
“What question?”
“Why one helmet vendor charged the charity for four hundred helmets when we only received one hundred and sixty.”
Raffaele felt irritation rise.
Not at Adrian.
At himself.
Grant had managed rally vendors for three years because Vanessa insisted her brother understood motorcycle events better than the accountants did.
“What did Grant say?”
“That teenagers should worry about algebra.”
“And Vanessa?”
Adrian hesitated.
“She heard us.”
Raffaele looked toward Lily’s closed bedroom door.
“What happened afterward?”
“Yesterday she told me not to embarrass the family at the rally.”
Raffaele felt the first piece settle into place.
Lily had not simply been humiliated in front of Adrian.
Adrian had been given something he could not ignore.
Then surrounded by men Grant had personally brought onto the property.
Raffaele asked one more question.
“What were you planning to do with the numbers?”
Adrian unlocked his phone.
“Show you tonight.”
May you like
On the screen was a folder containing photographs of invoices.
Raffaele recognized Grant’s signature on nearly every one.
