Chapter 4
Marco denied knowing Samuel Mercer.
Elias disproved him in six minutes.
An old restaurant security archive showed Marco entering Bellafonte through the staff corridor two years earlier.
Samuel walked behind him.
Same coat from the hospital photograph.
Same night he vanished.
I held the phone toward Marco.
“Still strangers?”
He stared.
Bianca stepped between us.
“Marco meets hundreds of people.”
“At two in the morning?”
“Business.”
I almost laughed.
“Hospital security business?”
Marco snapped:
“He wanted money.”
Hannah went still.
I looked at him.
“For what?”
Silence.
Bianca whispered:
“Marco.”
Too late.
I stepped closer.
“You just admitted speaking to him.”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
“He was blackmailing us.”
Hannah looked at him.
“My father never blackmailed anyone.”
Marco laughed.
“Everyone says that about poor men.”
Hannah flinched.
He enjoyed it.
“Give someone one secret and suddenly he thinks he deserves a fortune.”
“What secret?”
I asked.
Marco looked at Bianca.
She shook her head.
He stopped.
Good.
I turned to Hannah.
“Get the key.”
She returned with a small brass key wrapped inside an old receipt.
The receipt was from Bellafonte.
Dated two nights after Elena died.
On the back, Samuel had written three words:
BELOW THE CELLAR.
Elias looked at me.
Bellafonte had an old wine basement.
Below it was an unused service tunnel built during Prohibition.
Very few people knew.
Marco did.
His face said so.
We went downstairs.
Bianca stayed under guard.
Marco came with us.
He protested.
I wanted him to.
The tunnel smelled of stone and dust.
Hannah followed the numbers on the receipt.
Storage alcove nineteen.
The key fit.
Inside was no money.
No weapon.
One black lunchbox.
Hannah opened it.
A hospital badge.
Samuel Mercer.
A small voice recorder.
And Elena’s bracelet.
My wife’s bracelet.
The one I had been told was lost after her death.
I picked it up.
My hands shook once.
Marco whispered:
“Dominic.”
I looked at him.
He backed up.
Hannah pressed play.
Samuel’s voice filled the tunnel.
“If Corbin—”
He corrected himself.
“If Dominic Bellandi ever hears this, tell him Elena was alive when Bianca Wainwright left her room.”
I turned toward Marco.
May you like
The recording continued.
“And tell him her death was not the first thing they staged.”
