Chapter 4: Helena Makes Her Move
Alessandro reached the study door first.
Helena was behind the desk, the safe already open, both hands inside.
"Step away from the safe," he said.
She turned.
She was holding a thick envelope — cream-colored, sealed with red wax — and she did not put it down.
"Alessandro." Her voice had changed again.
The cold calculation was gone.
In its place was something warmer, more practiced.
The voice she used at family dinners, at charity events, at his father's funeral.
"I know how this looks.
I know you're frightened for your mother.
But you need to understand what your father asked me to do."
"He asked you to lock his wife in a basement?"
"He asked me to protect the estate." She set the envelope on the desk between them, not releasing it.
"Your mother was not well, Alessandro.
Long before she came to stay here.
Your father knew it.
He was afraid that if she had full control of the estate, certain people would take advantage of her.
He asked me to manage things quietly until you were ready."
"By faking her d*ath."
"By keeping her safe." Helena's chin lifted slightly.
"Everything I did, I did because your father asked me to."
"Then you won't mind if his solicitor reviews the original will."
The warmth in her face flickered.
Just once.
"The original will was superseded."
"By a document no one has seen."
"By a document that exists and can be produced."
"Then produce it."
Silence.
Alessandro walked to the desk and picked up the envelope.
Helena's hand moved toward it instinctively, then stopped.
He broke the seal.
Inside were three pages.
The first was a letter in his father's handwriting — shaky, written near the end, the letters pressing too hard into the paper the way they did when his hands had already begun to fail.
The second and third were financial statements.
Account transfers.
Large ones.
All dated within six months of his father's passing.
All moving from the Moretti estate accounts into a private account registered to a company called Vela Holdings.
He looked up.
"What is Vela Holdings?"
Helena said nothing.
"Samuel." Alessandro didn't turn around.
He knew Samuel was in the doorway.
"What is Vela Holdings?"
A long pause.
"It's Helena's company," Samuel said.
"She set it up eighteen months before your father d*ed."
Alessandro set the pages back on the desk.
He looked at Helena steadily.
"You've been moving money out of this estate for years."
"Those transfers were authorized."
"By whom?"
"By your father."
"My father, who was in hospital and whose signature you had access to through the estate documents you controlled."
Helena's expression did not break.
She was too practiced for that.
But her hand moved to the edge of the desk and stayed there, fingers pressing flat against the wood.
"You have no proof of anything improper," she said.
"What you have is a confused old woman's account of events and a folder of documents you don't yet understand.
Any solicitor will tell you the same thing." She picked up the envelope.
"I would strongly suggest you take some time before you do anything you cannot undo."
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm advising you." She tucked the envelope under her arm.
"As I have always done.
As your father trusted me to do."
Alessandro looked at her for a long moment.
Then he looked at the safe.
The second folder — the one Samuel had mentioned — was visible now that the front contents had been removed.
A plain manila folder, taped flat against the back panel exactly as Samuel had described.
Helena followed his gaze.
Her composure, for the first time, did not recover.
"That's private correspondence," she said.
"It has nothing to do with the estate."
Alessandro reached past her and pulled it free.
"Alessandro—"
He opened it.
Inside was a single photograph.
Old, slightly faded, printed on the kind of paper that suggested it had been developed from film rather than a digital file.
It showed two people seated at a restaurant table.
His father, younger, perhaps forty.
And a woman Alessandro did not recognize — dark-haired, smiling, her hand resting on top of his father's.
Behind the photograph was a birth certificate.
The child's name was Marco Vela.
The father's name was Edoardo Moretti.
Alessandro's father.
He set the photograph down very carefully.
"Who is Marco Vela?" he said.
May you like
Helena's hand tightened on the envelope under her arm.
"That," she said, "is something your mother was never supposed to know."
