“Elena,” he said, his voice rough. “Look at me.”
She lifted her head. Her eyes were red.
“Did he threaten you?” he asked.
She shook her head quickly. Then stopped. Then nodded once, a jerky, ashamed motion.
“He said if I ever complained about anything, he would say I was stealing,” she whispered. “And he said you would believe him. Because you always believe him. He said Sophia and I would have to leave that same night. We have nowhere else.”
Sophia fiddled with the ear of her teddy bear.
Alessandro felt something hot and sick turn over in his chest.
“How long have you worked here?” he asked.
“Four years,” Elena said. “Since Sophia was one.”
“And before that?”
She hesitated. Her hands smoothed Sophia’s sweater.
“I worked at the villa in Como. For your wife.”
Alessandro went very still.
“Chiara?” he said.
Elena nodded, tears spilling again. “Mrs. Moretti. She hired me when I was nineteen. She was kind. When she got sick, she asked me to stay. After she passed, there was no job, and I had Sophia, and your manager said there was an opening here. I didn’t know it was your house at first. I swear.”
Sophia looked up at the name Chiara and tilted her head.
Alessandro stared at Elena’s face — the dark hair pulled back, the tired eyes, the way she held her daughter — and for the first time he saw what he should have seen years ago. The faint resemblance in the brow. The shape of the hands.
But that thought was interrupted by Gabriel returning, his expression grim.
He held a small tablet.
“Doctor Ferraro is sending a courier,” he said quietly. “And you need to see this. We opened his office. We didn’t have to look hard.”
He turned the tablet toward Alessandro.
A photo. Inside Victor’s desk drawer, beneath a false bottom.
Dozens of pills. Loose. White, identical to Alessandro’s. And beside them, a second bottle, unmarked, filled with smaller, chalkier tablets.
And a ledger. Handwritten dates. Dosages. A column marked with Alessandro’s initials.
Gabriel swiped.
A second photo. A bank statement printed and folded. Large, regular transfers to an offshore account. And a hospital invoice.
St. Catherine’s Private Clinic.
Alessandro’s throat closed.
“Whose name is on that invoice?” he whispered.
Gabriel’s mouth tightened. “Not yours.”
Alessandro took the tablet with both hands.
The invoice was for long-term cardiac care. For a patient listed as M. Salvatore.
“Matteo,” Alessandro said. The name was ash in his mouth. “His son.”
Victor had a son. Twenty-eight. Born with a severe heart defect. Alessandro had paid for his first two surgeries when Victor couldn’t afford them. He had visited the boy in the hospital. He had held Victor while Victor wept.
Gabriel nodded once. “Matteo Salvatore. Thirty-one now. On the transplant list for eight months. Private status. Victor has been paying a consultant in Zurich. Off the books. Two hundred thousand euros already. The transfers match the dates he started refilling your prescriptions.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“He was killing me slowly,” Alessandro said, his voice barely audible, “to keep me sick enough to sign the medical proxy and the financial authority. So he could move money without me noticing. For Matteo.”
“He was swapping half your dose with a placebo cut with laxative and caffeine,” Gabriel said. “Ferraro suspects it on the phone already. Enough to make you weak, dizzy, compliant. Not enough to kill you outright and trigger an autopsy. Until you signed.”
Elena made a small sound and pulled Sophia tighter.
Alessandro closed his eyes. The betrayal was not clean. It was tangled with love. That made it worse.
“Where is he?” Alessandro asked.
“Study. He hasn’t spoken.”
“Bring him back.”
Victor was brought back in. He looked smaller without his phone, without his keys. His suit jacket was open. He saw the tablet in Alessandro’s hands and his shoulders caved.
“You looked in my desk,” he said.
“Matteo,” Alessandro said.
Victor’s face crumpled. All the precise control broke at once. He pressed his hands over his eyes for a second, then let them fall.
“He has weeks,” Victor whispered. “Maybe days. The list is a lie if you don’t have money. You know it is. I went to you last year. I asked for help. You said the board couldn’t authorize another private payment. You said to wait.”
Alessandro remembered. He remembered saying it, distracted, signing papers, telling Victor the company had rules.
“I didn’t want you dead,” Victor said, his voice cracking, tears now running freely. “I swear on my mother’s grave, I never wanted you dead. I needed you ill. I needed you to let me handle the accounts for a month. Just a month. I was going to put it back. I was going to fix the prescription. Matteo is my son, Alessandro. He is all I have. You have everything. You have houses you don’t sleep in. I needed you to be weak for a little while so my son could live.”
