When Luca emerged, she told him what she had seen.
He listened carefully.
“We can't assume the call means anything,” he said.
“I know.”
“Gabriel may be speaking to his attorney.”
“He may be.”
Luca studied her.
“You're getting good at this.”
“At what?”
“Separating what you know from what you suspect.”
She gave him a tired smile.
“I work in a restaurant. If I assumed every customer who looked angry was going to complain, I'd never get anything done.”
For a moment, Luca smiled too.
Then his expression became serious.
“There's something else you should know.”
He opened a drawer and removed a sealed envelope.
“My father wrote this to me shortly before he died. I found it in a box of personal papers after the funeral.”
Elena watched him break the seal.
The letter was brief.
Anthony had written that he had made mistakes in the way he managed the company, particularly when he allowed trusted people to make decisions without sufficient oversight.
He asked Luca to remember that loyalty was not the same as silence.
At the bottom, he had written:
If you ever find yourself choosing between protecting the family name and protecting the people who built the family business, protect the people. A name can be repaired. A life cannot be returned.
Luca read the final sentence twice.
“I thought he was talking about ordinary business problems,” he admitted.
“Maybe he was talking about more than one thing.”
He looked at her.
“My father may have known about the transfers. He may have made decisions I don't understand. I won't turn him into a hero simply because he's dead.”
Elena nodded.
“Then don't. Find out what he did.”
Luca folded the letter.
“That's what I intend to do.”
That evening, Serena received a message from the former attorney's firm.
The archived case file had been located.
But before the firm could release it, someone had contacted the records department claiming that the file was subject to a legal hold.
The request had been submitted using credentials associated with the Varenzi corporate legal office.
The firm wanted written confirmation from the company's current legal department before proceeding.
Serena immediately notified Luca.
He read the message in silence.
Then he looked at Elena.
“Someone is trying to prevent us from seeing the original report.”
“Gabriel?”
“We don't know.”
“But someone has access to the legal system.”
“Yes.”
Luca picked up his phone and called the company's general counsel directly.
He ordered a preservation notice covering all records related to the welfare reserve, Meridian Consulting, Northstar, and Daniel Marlowe's investigation.
He also instructed counsel to document the attempted restriction and determine who had requested it.
For the first time, Elena saw Luca use his power not to silence a person but to preserve evidence.
It was a small distinction.
It felt enormous.
Then Serena received another message.
The former attorney had found a separate envelope attached to Daniel's original report.
It contained a handwritten note.
The note had been addressed to Anthony Varenzi.
And it had never been included in the official archive.
CHAPTER 8 — THE LETTER THAT CHANGED THE STORY
The envelope arrived at the Bellavere two days later.
The independent attorney delivered it personally, accompanied by a written record describing where it had been found and how it had been preserved.
It was yellowed with age.
The handwriting on the front belonged to Daniel Marlowe.
For Anthony Varenzi. Personal and confidential.
Luca asked Elena whether she wanted to be present when it was opened.
She did.
Serena and the independent attorney sat with them in the private dining room.
The attorney photographed the envelope before removing its contents.
Inside was a short letter and a single page of handwritten notes.
Daniel's letter began by explaining that the discrepancies in the Employee Welfare Reserve were not simply payroll errors.
He had traced several transfers to companies that appeared to provide legitimate consulting services. But the invoices did not consistently match the services delivered.
Some payments were supported by contracts.
Others relied on vague descriptions such as “executive support,” “special projects,” and “administrative coordination.”
The amounts were not always large enough to attract attention individually.
Together, they represented a substantial sum.
Daniel wrote that he had identified two separate possibilities.
The first was that someone had used the welfare reserve to cover ordinary company expenses during periods of financial difficulty, intending to reimburse the account later.
The second was that some transfers had been redirected to entities controlled by people inside the organization.
The available records did not yet establish which explanation applied to every transaction.
Then came the sentence that made Luca stop reading.
I do not believe your son is involved. He has not been given access to the records, and I recommend that he remain outside this review until the evidence is secured.
Luca looked up.
“My father asked Daniel to protect me?”
“Possibly,” the attorney said. “The letter supports that interpretation, but it doesn't tell us everything about their conversations.”
Elena looked at the next paragraph.
Daniel had written that he planned to provide Anthony with the original transaction ledger after verifying the account references.
He also wanted to speak to Richard Sloane about several approvals.
The letter ended with a warning.
There is one transfer I cannot explain. It was approved using credentials belonging to someone who should not have had access to the welfare account. If the authorization was genuine, then the problem is larger than we thought. If it was not genuine, someone has deliberately used another person's identity.
Below the paragraph was a reference number.
Serena entered it into the independent review team's database.
A matching record appeared.
The transfer had been approved six days before Daniel's death.
The amount was $240,000.
The destination was a subsidiary connected to Meridian Consulting.
But the transaction record contained another detail.
The authorization had been issued using Anthony Varenzi's credentials.
Luca stared at the screen.
“Could my father have approved it?”
“Yes,” Serena said. “The record shows the credentials used, not necessarily the person who entered them. We need access logs, authorization records, and any surviving supporting documents.”
The attorney agreed.
“The evidence doesn't establish who made the transfer or whether it was authorized by the account holder. We should avoid drawing conclusions until the records are examined.”
Luca nodded, but his face had become pale.
“My father might have approved the payment. Or someone might have used his credentials.”
Elena looked at him.
“You don't have to decide what it means today.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh.
“Everyone keeps telling me that.”
“Because it's true.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he lowered his eyes.