Chapter 6
Melissa was furious.
Not at Adrian.
At Raffaele.
She came to the estate with the notebook in her purse and refused coffee.
“My son thought he had to investigate your employees because he didn’t trust you to believe him.”
Raffaele did not argue.
“He should’ve come to me.”
“He’s fourteen.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
That landed.
Melissa had been married to Raffaele’s brother for eleven years before Dominic died in a construction accident.
She knew the family well enough to understand its habits.
“Dominic used to say you’d walk into a burning building for family.”
Raffaele looked away.
Melissa continued.
“He also said nobody liked telling you who started the fire.”
Adrian waited outside with Lily.
The two children were sitting on the patio drawing motorcycles in sidewalk chalk.
Inside, the adults decided something that cost Raffaele emotionally.
Adrian would stop staying overnight at the estate until the investigation finished.
Not because he had done anything wrong.
Because Melissa no longer trusted the environment.
Raffaele accepted it.
Vanessa seized on the change immediately.
She told relatives Melissa had removed Adrian because the boy was violent.
Rebecca warned Raffaele not to fight rumors with other rumors.
So he did nothing publicly.
Privately, the auditors kept working.
A former rally volunteer came forward.
She had questioned inflated security counts six months earlier.
Grant removed her from event scheduling.
Another volunteer said Vanessa warned her:
“Grant has Raffaele’s full confidence. If you make problems for him, you’re making problems for the family.”
Raffaele had never said that.
But it sounded believable because it resembled how he had run other parts of his life.
That was becoming the ugliest part of the investigation.
May you like
Vanessa and Grant had lied.
They had chosen lies shaped exactly like Raffaele’s reputation.
