Chapter 4: What Elena Never Told Me
The police took Marco's initial statement in the estate's east sitting room while I stood in the hallway outside with Vincent and my attorney, Paul Reeves, who had arrived within forty minutes of my call — a speed that told me Paul had understood the seriousness immediately without needing it explained.
"They'll want the tablet," Paul said.
"The footage, the access log, the swab results when they come back from the lab."
"They can have everything."
"The child's statement will matter.
She's the primary witness."
"She's three."
"I know." Paul kept his voice even.
"Her account will be corroborated by the physical evidence.
But the prosecutor will want to know she can describe what she saw consistently.
That she hasn't been coached." He looked at me carefully.
"Has anyone spoken to her beyond what happened in the ballroom?"
"No."
"Good.
Keep it that way until we have a child advocate involved."
I nodded.
Down the hall, through the closed sitting room door, I could hear the low murmur of a detective's questions and Marco's careful, measured answers.
He had composed himself.
He would be strategic now.
That was who Marco was.
I walked back toward the ballroom.
Most guests had been interviewed and released.
A few remained — the senator, two of my business partners, and their wives — seated near the far windows with drinks they weren't touching.
They looked up when I entered.
I didn't stop to speak to them.
Sophia was sitting on a small chair near the service corridor, Lily asleep across her lap.
The little girl's dark curls were pressed against her mother's arm.
One white sneaker had finally come untied completely and dangled from her foot.
I pulled a chair close and sat.
Sophia looked at me.
Her eyes were red but her voice was steady.
"Is he going to be arrested?"
"Yes."
She exhaled.
Her hand moved slowly over Lily's hair.
"She was so scared," Sophia said.
"When she saw him across the room.
She knew he'd seen her see him.
In the cold room." Her voice dropped.
"She's been carrying that all evening.
She didn't know what to do except—"
"She did exactly the right thing."
Sophia's chin trembled once.
She pressed her lips together.
"Mr.
Moretti, I need to tell you something." She glanced down at Lily, then back at me.
"Something I should have told you months ago."
I waited.
"Marco came to the estate in February.
You were in Chicago.
He told me he was picking up some of Elena's personal items that you'd agreed to return to the family." She paused.
"I let him in.
I showed him to Elena's study.
He was there for maybe an hour."
February.
Four months ago.
"What did he take?"
"Documents.
He said you'd approved it.
I had no reason to doubt him." Her voice was tight with guilt.
"I should have called to confirm.
I should have—"
"Sophia." I kept my voice quiet.
"You couldn't have known."
"He was in Elena's study for an hour, Dominic." She used my name without thinking, then caught herself.
"I'm sorry—"
"It's fine."
She looked at me directly.
"He wasn't just taking documents.
I think he was reading them.
The trust provisions.
Elena's estate structure." She swallowed.
"I think that's when he found it.
The clause about Ethan."
The hallway felt very still.
Elena had never mentioned that clause to me.
I hadn't known it existed until Marco said it himself forty minutes ago in the ballroom.
But Elena had been meticulous about her family's financial arrangements — she had grown up watching the Vitelli money cause damage, and she had spent years trying to structure her own affairs carefully, fairly, in ways that protected the people she loved.
She had protected Ethan.
She had not protected him from this.
"There's something else," Sophia said.
I looked at her.
"The man Marco used.
The one in the kitchen whites." She kept her voice low.
"I think I know who he is.
There's a man named Caruso.
He does private work.
Odd jobs.
He came to the estate twice last year with Marco, introduced as a contractor."
"You recognized him from the footage?"
"His walk." She said it simply.
"He has a specific way of moving.
Right shoulder drops slightly.
I noticed it both times he was here." She met my eyes.
"I noticed it on the footage too."
I stood.
"Will you write that down?
Everything — February, Caruso, both visits.
Everything you remember."
"Yes."
"Tonight."
"Yes." She looked down at Lily.
"Mr.
Moretti.
What happens now?
To us.
To our position here."
I looked at the little girl asleep across her mother's lap.
One untied sneaker.
Dark curls.
Three years old, and she had run across a ballroom full of New York's most powerful people because she could not let Ethan eat that cake.
"Nothing changes," I said.
"You're staying."
Sophia's breath caught.
I walked back toward the east corridor.
Paul was waiting outside the sitting room.
He held up his phone.
"Lab called in a preliminary," he said.
"The substance in the frosting is confirmed as a concentrated peanut protein compound.
Pharmaceutical grade." He paused.
"That's not something you buy at a grocery store, Dominic.
Someone sourced it specifically."
Pharmaceutical grade.
Marco had debts.
Serious debts.
The kind that don't wait.
"Find out who supplied it," I said.
"Whoever sold that compound knew what it was going to be used for."
Paul was already dialing.
I pushed open the sitting room door.
Marco looked up from across the table.
The detective beside him straightened.
"Mr.
Moretti—" the detective began.
"I have a name for you," I said.
"Caruso.
He's the man in the kitchen whites.
My housekeeper can identify him and place him at this estate on two prior occasions with Marco Vitelli." I looked at Marco.
"And I want the name of whoever supplied the compound.
Pharmaceutical grade peanut protein doesn't come from nowhere."
Marco's lawyer put a hand on his arm.
Marco shook it off.
He looked at me across the table with something that was almost relief — the expression of a man who had been holding something unbearable and had finally been given permission to put it down.
"His name is Ferris," Marco said quietly.
"Raymond Ferris.
He runs a medical supply operation out of Queens.
Off the books."
His lawyer said, "Marco, do not—"
"It's over, David." Marco's voice was flat.
Empty.
"It's already over."
He was right about that.
But what none of us knew yet was that Raymond Ferris had kept records.
May you like
Detailed ones.
And Marco Vitelli was not the only name in them.
