Chapter 3 - Victor Had Been Building My Funeral Around a Forged Signature

The notebook led us to my attorney before midnight.

Not my usual personal attorney.

Someone Victor had never met.

I chose Daniel Russo, an old prosecutor who had spent years trying to put men like me in prison before eventually retiring into private practice. We had disliked each other honestly for nearly thirty years.

That made him useful.

When I placed Victor’s hidden documents on his desk, Daniel read everything without dramatic reactions. Only when he reached Lucia’s intercepted letters did he remove his glasses and look at me.

“He didn’t just isolate you.”

“I noticed.”

“He was manufacturing incapacity.”

I frowned.

Daniel showed me several pages I had assumed were routine financial drafts. They contained proposed amendments to corporate control agreements, emergency medical proxies, and succession documents.

My signature appeared on some.

Good copies.

Not perfect.

Victor had spent twenty-five years watching me sign thousands of papers.

He had practice.

Under the proposed arrangement, if I became medically incapacitated or died unexpectedly, a temporary management committee would control several companies until estate matters were resolved.

Victor chaired the committee.

Gabriel was named too.

So were two executives I trusted.

At first glance, that seemed balanced.

Then Daniel followed the ownership chain behind several newly created holding companies.

Victor controlled them indirectly.

If the plan succeeded, he could move valuable assets during the confusion after my death while appearing to be the loyal man protecting my estate.

I asked whether he could truly get away with it.

Daniel gave me an irritated look.

“You spent thirty years building businesses through layers of companies because opacity protected you. Your friend appears to have learned the same lesson.”

That was fair.

Then he asked the question nobody else had.

“Why now?”

Victor had been beside me for twenty-five years. If greed alone motivated him, why wait until I was older, wealthier, and surrounded by more legal oversight?

We found the answer inside one of the prepaid phones.

Messages.

Months of them.

Victor owed enormous amounts of money.

Not gambling debts.

Investments.

He had secretly funded a logistics company with a man named Marco DeLuca, expecting to use my distribution businesses to guarantee contracts. The project collapsed. Loans were called. DeLuca demanded repayment.

Then my heart attack happened.

Victor saw opportunity.

A death from arrhythmia would surprise nobody.

The timing could erase his debts and make him rich enough that none of his failures mattered.

But there was another complication.

Lucia.

As my only child, she would eventually control large parts of my estate even though we were estranged. Victor needed her emotionally distant and legally unprepared.

That explained the intercepted letters.

He had been planning longer than three months.

The poisoning only began three months ago.

The isolation began years earlier.

I called Lucia at 2:18 in the morning.

Daniel had found her current number within minutes.

My hand hovered above the phone longer than I would ever admit.

Then I pressed call.

A sleepy male voice answered.

“Hello?”

I nearly hung up.

“Is Lucia there?”

There was silence.

“Who is this?”

“Her father.”

Another silence.

Then movement.

A woman’s voice came through.

“Dad?”

Six years disappeared inside one word.

I did not know what to say.

So I told the truth.

“I found your letters.”

Lucia started crying.

So did I.

Not loudly.

I had forgotten what it felt like to cry without anger attached.

She asked why I never answered.

I explained.

Not everything.

Enough.

Then she asked whether I was in danger.

That question told me she still cared despite everything Victor had done to convince both of us otherwise.

“Yes.”

“I’m coming.”

“No.”

The old habit returned automatically.

Protect by controlling.

Lucia heard it.

“Dad, do not start.”

I almost laughed.

She was still my daughter.

Daniel covered his mouth to hide his amusement.

I told Lucia to stay where she was until security arrangements were made. This time, I explained why instead of simply ordering her.

She accepted that.

Progress.

Before hanging up, she told me Matteo was asleep upstairs.

My grandson.

Five years old.

Almost the same age as Sophia.

I stared through Daniel’s office window at the Chicago lights and tried to understand how a little girl’s crayon drawing had just returned a grandson I never knew.

Then Gabriel called.

Victor was missing.

His room had been searched.

Clothes gone.

Passport gone.

One of the estate vehicles had disappeared from a rear garage.

He knew we had discovered something.

Daniel immediately contacted federal authorities.

I gave them everything.

That decision cost me pride.

Men in my world were trained to solve betrayal privately.

But Sophia had already taught me what private loyalty could hide.

I wanted Victor alive.

Questioned.

Exposed.

Not buried where unanswered questions could become legends.

At dawn, investigators tracked the missing vehicle to a private airfield outside Chicago.

Victor was not there.

The car was.

Inside the trunk, police found Peter Sloan, the porter Sophia had drawn near the medication cabinet.

Alive.

Barely.

He had been beaten badly.

When Peter regained consciousness, he told investigators Victor forced him to replace pills and manipulate the camera system. He participated because Victor threatened his younger brother, who owed money to DeLuca.

Peter knew the pills were wrong.

He claimed he did not know they were intended to kill me until several weeks earlier.

Then he tried to stop.

Victor discovered it.

Peter told us something else.

The night Sophia interrupted dinner was supposed to be the final dose.

Victor expected me to collapse before midnight.

By sunrise, my death would have been announced.

The timing matched the prepared statement.

I thought about Sophia saying four simple words.

The pill is wrong.

Without them, there might already have been flowers outside my gates.

Then Peter gave investigators one final location.

An abandoned warehouse near the river.

Victor and DeLuca used it when they needed somewhere no Moretti security cameras could reach.

Gabriel wanted to go personally.

So did I.

Daniel stopped both of us.

“You want to prove you’re different from the people plotting your murder?”

I stared at him.

“Let the police do their job.”

For once, I listened.