Chapter 7
Marco changed tactics.
He stopped denying the theft.
“My father took money.”
Camilla’s eyes remained on him.
“And?”
“He said the family owed him.”
Domenico almost smiled.
That excuse had survived generations.
Marco continued.
“Enzo found out. He threatened to expose everything. My father begged him to wait.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
Camilla's breathing slowed.
“What happened at the warehouse?”
Marco looked toward the window.
“Enzo brought copies of the ledgers.”
Domenico asked:
“To give Angelo?”
“Yes.”
“My father wanted them destroyed.”
Silence.
Marco rubbed one hand across his mouth.
“They fought.”
Camilla leaned forward.
“Then?”
“Something spilled.”
“What?”
“Fuel. Solvent. I don't remember.”
“You remember.”
Marco's eyes flashed.
“I was twenty-one.”
Camilla's voice broke.
“So was I.”
That sentence silenced him.
While Marco was hiding one night, Camilla had spent the same night being told her father was dead and disgraced.
The difference had shaped their lives.
Domenico opened the second envelope.
Inside was a handwritten statement by Enzo.
Incomplete.
The bottom half had been torn away.
The surviving lines accused Raffaele of siphoning funds through transport vendors.
Enzo also wrote:
If Raffaele refuses to return the ledgers, I will bring Marco before Angelo. The boy was present when—
The page ended.
Camilla looked up.
“When what?”
Marco’s eyes closed.
Domenico watched him.
“What did you see?”
Marco whispered:
“Nothing.”
Camilla’s palm struck the table.
Not hard.
The emotion came from her face instead.
“Stop making me beg for my own father.”
Marco looked at her.
Something like shame appeared.
Then disappeared.
Before he could answer, Domenico’s attorney entered with another discovery.
Angelo had paid a private investigator after the warehouse fire.
The investigator died years ago.
His firm’s archive still existed.
One box remained.
Domenico asked:
“What’s inside?”
The attorney handed him the index.
Photographs.
Witness interviews.
And one cassette recording labeled:
May you like
M. VALENTI — AGE 21.
Marco went completely still.
