Chapter 2 - ISABELLA’S NOTEBOOK
Table of Contents 6
Crane was moved to a secured study under guard while Lorenzo called an attorney and an investigator outside his usual organization.
That surprised me.
I expected threats.
Violence.
Maybe something worse.
Instead, Lorenzo stood beside Nico’s crib and watched his son sleep.
“I want him arrested if there’s evidence.”
Dante stared at him.
“And if there isn’t enough yet?”
“Then we find enough.”
No blood.
No basement.
No revenge.
Evidence.
I began to understand that fearsome reputations often hid more complicated men than the stories suggested.
Elena remained in the nursery.
She sat in a chair with both hands around a cup she wasn’t drinking.
I pulled another chair beside her.
“Tell me about the notebook.”
She stared into the cup.
“It started with bills.”
“What bills?”
“Medical invoices.”
Isabella had always managed the household health records herself. During pregnancy, Crane began billing through a private medical company called North Meridian Wellness.
The charges were huge.
That didn’t concern Isabella because money meant nothing in a house like this.
What concerned her were the patient names.
Some bills were not hers.
Some belonged to people she had never heard of.
“Why would she care?”
“Because one of the names belonged to her brother.”
Lorenzo looked toward us.
“Mateo?”
Elena nodded.
Mateo had died five years earlier.
Cancer.
At least, that was the official story.
Yet North Meridian billed private treatments under his name three years after his death.
I frowned.
“Could it be fraud?”
“That’s what Isabella thought.”
She started tracing.
Then she found other dead names.
Former employees.
An old driver.
Two women who had once worked at the estate.
All supposedly deceased.
All appearing in ongoing private medical billing.
I looked at Lorenzo.
“Were these people connected to your organization?”
His expression hardened.
“Some.”
That made the pattern darker.
Isabella suspected North Meridian was using dead identities to purchase controlled medications and hide medical procedures.
She wrote everything in the notebook.
Then she confronted Crane.
He told her pregnancy hormones were making her paranoid.
The same doctor who later blamed Nico’s attacks on a rare immune disorder.
“Did she tell you?” I asked Lorenzo.
He looked ashamed.
“She tried.”
Elena looked at him.
“More than once.”
Lorenzo did not defend himself.
That mattered.
“I told her Victor had treated my family for years.”
His voice lowered.
“I told her she was exhausted.”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“She stopped telling you after that.”
The sentence hurt him.
I could see it.
Trust broken by dismissal is often quieter than betrayal, but sometimes just as damaging.
“Where did Isabella hide the notebook?”
Elena answered.
“In Nico’s nursery.”
“What?”
“She put it behind the wooden backing of a photograph frame.”
We looked toward the wall.
Dozens of photographs.
Lorenzo immediately began removing them.
Elena pointed.
“The one from the lake house.”
A large photograph showed Isabella visibly pregnant, Lorenzo beside her, Elena behind them holding a picnic basket.
Dante removed the backing.
Empty.
Elena shook her head.
“That’s where it was.”
“Someone took it.”
I looked at the frame.
Dust covered the back except near one corner.
Fresh disturbance.
Then I noticed something.
A tiny smear of blue.
Not ink.
Powder.
I touched it with a gloved finger.
“Don’t.”
Dante looked at me.
“What?”
“This might be medication residue.”
We bagged the frame.
The lab later confirmed traces of the same sedative hidden inside Nico’s bottles.
Whoever stole the notebook also handled the drug.
Now the timeline began to form.
Six nights ago, someone entered Elena’s room searching for Isabella’s notebook.
They found it.
Maybe the notebook revealed that Isabella had hidden additional evidence elsewhere.
Then Nico’s nightly attacks continued.
Why?
Because the baby was leverage.
Or a test.
Or both.
I asked Elena the question no one else had.
“Why exactly 12:03?”
She frowned.
“What?”
“Why not midnight? Why not whenever he finishes the bottle?”
Her expression changed.
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Isabella died at 12:03.”
My skin went cold.
Of course.
The attacks were not merely timed.
They were a message.
Every night, Nico nearly died at the exact minute his mother had been declared dead.
Someone wanted Lorenzo to remember.
Or suffer.
Dante looked furious.
“That means this is personal.”
I shook my head.
“Personal and controlled. Whoever is doing this knows Nico’s feeding schedule, knows the time of Isabella’s death, knows the house, and had access to the nursery.”
Lorenzo looked toward the guards.
“How many people?”
Dante answered reluctantly.
“Too many.”
Doctors.
Nurses.
Nanny.
Kitchen staff.
Security.
Family.
That last category made Lorenzo’s expression change.
“Who stayed here after Isabella died?”
Elena named them.
Her.
Crane.
The nanny, Sophie.
Dante.
Two night nurses before me.
Three household staff.
And Lorenzo’s younger brother, Gabriel, who lived in the guest wing for several months after the funeral.
Lorenzo turned toward Dante.
“Where is Gabriel?”
Dante hesitated.
“He left for Milan yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Business.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“What business?”
Dante had no answer.
That seemed impossible in this house.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
The message contained a photograph.
Me.
Standing beside Nico’s crib less than thirty minutes earlier.
Taken from above.
Inside the room supposedly without cameras.
My breath stopped.
Someone was still watching.
A second message appeared.
YOU ARE ASKING QUESTIONS ISABELLA ALREADY ASKED.
Then another.
SHE DIDN’T GET TO FINISH.
I showed Lorenzo.
His face changed instantly.
Dante searched the room.
Not openly.
Carefully.
Within five minutes, he found a pinhole camera embedded inside an antique ceiling vent.
Lorenzo stared at it.
“The nursery has been monitored the entire time.”
Elena covered her mouth.
“Then whoever did this watched every attack.”
“And watched us discover the bottle,” I said.
We removed the device.
It transmitted wirelessly to an internal receiver.
Dante traced the signal.
Not outside the mansion.
To the guest wing.
Gabriel’s rooms.
Lorenzo said nothing for several seconds.
Then he walked out.
I followed.
Gabriel’s suite looked untouched.
Closet half-empty.
Suitcases gone.
Desk clean.
Too clean.
Dante searched behind the television cabinet.
A receiver.
Multiple storage drives.
And something else.
The missing black notebook.
Elena started crying when she saw it.
Lorenzo opened the first page.
Isabella’s handwriting.
Dates.
Names.
Drug codes.
Payments.
At the back, one sentence had been underlined three times.
GABRIEL KNOWS WHAT VICTOR IS DOING.
Lorenzo went completely still.
Then came a final line.
But I don’t think Gabriel is helping him.
I think Gabriel is afraid of him.
That changed everything.
If Gabriel wasn’t the one poisoning Nico, why had the receiver and notebook been hidden in his room?
Someone was framing him.
Just like Crane might have framed Nico’s illness.
And possibly just like Isabella had been framed as paranoid before she died.
The real question was no longer who had access.
It was who had spent years controlling what everyone in the Bolaro family believed.
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