Chapter 5 - THE PAGE THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST
I told Luca about the dead man's signature before lunch.
He did not shout. He did something that worried me more. He went completely quiet and began counting dates on his fingers, as if the right combination might bring his father back long enough to answer a question.
"Dad died in November, six years ago," he said. "That resolution is dated two years after his funeral."
Amelia leaned over the photocopy Priya had scanned. Peter had left us only a partial image, with no filing stamp or verification mark. It was a clue, not a verdict.
"Do you recognize the signature?" she asked.
"It looks like his. But so do the signatures on every framed letter at the restaurant."
Michael paced the back office of Trattoria Moretti. "If someone's been using Dad's name for years, the reserve could have been drained long before Vanessa tried to sell us out."
"Could have," Amelia said. "We still need the actual records."
Carlo Vitale provided a second piece that afternoon. His attorney sent an acquisition proposal from Bellini Capital with a schedule of assets. It listed the building, restaurant licenses, and eight upstairs apartments. It also listed a separate fund described as an unrestricted capital reserve.
Michael pointed at the figure. "That's our employee fund."
Luca studied it. "It shouldn't be part of any sale."
"Then why is it there?" Michael asked.
Nobody answered.
Anna invited us into the kitchen, where she made espresso and refused to let the brothers leave without eating. I watched Michael stare at the cracked porcelain bowl of olives on the counter. His father had bought that bowl the year the restaurant opened. It was the sort of detail a purchaser could value at zero while a family valued it beyond money.
"I wanted to protect the place," Michael said. "Vanessa told me a good manager would consider a sale if the finances were bad. I asked whether Luca knew. She said you'd already agreed."
"I didn't," Luca replied.
"I know that now. But you hadn't returned my calls for weeks. You have to understand how believable she sounded."
Luca looked at him with an expression I couldn't read. "I should have answered."
"Yes," Michael said. "You should have."
The admission hung between them. Michael didn't offer forgiveness, and Luca didn't ask for it.
Later, Priya and I met with an investigator assigned to the threats against me. We provided the photograph of my mother, the anonymous relocation offer, and the call details. The investigator was precise about what he could and couldn't establish. Nobody had yet identified the photographer. There was no proof tying the message to Peter, Vanessa, or Richard. The police did arrange an additional check around my mother's building, but my daily life did not suddenly become safe because someone wore a badge.
I slept at my mother's place that night. She left the hallway light on, something she hadn't done since I was a child.
At six the following morning, Anna called. "We found Carlo Gatti. He's willing to talk."
Gatti was eighty-one, lived outside Milwaukee, and still kept copies of financial documents in alphabetical binders. He agreed to a recorded video meeting after Amelia identified herself and explained the limited question: what had Antonio Moretti done to protect the employee fund?
When his face appeared on the screen, I recognized the sharp chin from the old photograph. He was thinner and wore thick glasses, but he still looked like a man who could calculate a restaurant's profit by counting the plates returned to the sink.
"Antonio wanted two things," he told us. "No one could sell the building without both sons' written consent, and no one could use the employee fund for construction or personal debt. We wrote those instructions into separate governing documents."
"Are they still effective?" Amelia asked.
"I can't answer without the current filings. But I kept originals. I was afraid somebody would eventually decide Antonio's sentimental rules were bad business."
Gatti explained that some agreements might be internal obligations rather than recorded property restrictions; their enforceability depended on what was properly adopted and filed. Amelia asked him to send authenticated copies through his counsel, not simply email an image that could later be challenged.
Before the call ended, Gatti looked at me. "Rosa Esposito's granddaughter, are you?"
"Yes, sir."
His face softened. "She caught Antonio once trying to pay a cook's hospital bill from his personal pocket after he'd already promised the fund would cover it. She said, 'If you want workers to trust a fund, stop making them grateful to you personally.' He never forgot it."
Neither did I.
I thought about Luca offering to cover my mother's rent. Generosity could save a person in trouble. But rules that applied even when the powerful person wasn't feeling generous—that was something different.
The accountant promised to send the documents. We had a path, but still not the answer to why the old signature appeared two years after Antonio died.
Before he disconnected, Gatti asked whether the brothers had kept their father's portrait near the kitchen entrance. Michael turned the camera and showed him. The old accountant wiped his glasses with a handkerchief.
"He wasn't always right," Gatti said. "Once he almost closed the place because he couldn't pay a supplier. Your grandmother told him that pride wasn't a business plan. She helped him sit down with the staff and explain the numbers instead of pretending everything was fine. That's the tradition worth saving, not the sign above the door."
Michael looked toward Luca. I could see he was thinking about all the things neither brother had explained to the other. They had spent years treating their father's restaurant like a sacred object instead of a workplace that needed attention, records, repairs, and people willing to ask uncomfortable questions. It wasn't a comfortable lesson, but it was probably the one Antonio would have wanted them to learn.
An hour later, Peter Walsh contacted Amelia directly. He offered to meet with an independent forensic accountant if his employment records were preserved and if he could retain his own attorney. Amelia agreed those were reasonable procedural requests, subject to the company's legal obligations.
They met at a neutral office. I wasn't required to attend, but Peter specifically asked that I hear one part of his account because he feared the people who had approached me.
"I didn't send the photograph," he said immediately. "I swear that."
"I didn't accuse you," I answered.
He looked older than he had at the engagement dinner. "You should know I approved those transfers. I didn't create every invoice, but I released them. Richard told me the holding company had authorized the work. He showed me what looked like a complete resolution."
"And Antonio's signature?" Amelia asked.
Peter's hands tightened around his glass of water. "I saw it the first time four years ago. I told Victor Hale that a dead man couldn't sign a restructuring resolution. Victor said it was a compiled copy of an earlier executed agreement. He told me the date was only the date it had been entered into the system."
"Did you verify that?" the accountant asked.
"No. I should have."
"And after that?"
Peter breathed out slowly. "I kept paying. I'd already signed off on the first transfers. Once you admit you're not sure the basis was valid, you have to explain why you kept going. So I told myself Victor knew what he was doing."
He showed us emails, including one where he had asked for the original signed resolution. The reply came from Victor, copying Richard: ORIGINAL HELD WITH TRANSACTION COUNSEL. DO NOT DELAY PAYMENTS.
Amelia asked whether he had altered the seating chart. Peter said Vanessa requested it because Carlo spoke Italian and she wanted him beside her for introductions. He acknowledged approving the change but denied knowing about Michael's proposed transport.
The difference mattered. Peter appeared to have helped move money and cover up questions, but it did not establish that he helped plan the removal of Michael. I hated how complicated accountability became when nobody was completely innocent or entirely honest.
At the end of the meeting, Peter slid over a list of payments. "Richard demanded another transfer yesterday. Two hundred thousand, labeled emergency transport and consultancy fees. I refused to release it because the account was already under review."
"Who is the payee?" the accountant asked.
"Lakefront Consolidated Services again. Except the destination bank changed."
The last four digits of the new account matched the numbers on an invoice attached to Vanessa's wedding-planning budget. It did not prove she owned the account, but it established a reason to trace the money.
Peter looked straight at me. "Emily, someone told Richard you spoke Italian before the party."
I felt cold. "Who?"
"I don't know. But Vanessa asked me three days earlier whether household employees' language skills were listed in their personnel files."
"Why would she ask that?"
"She said it was for guest arrangements."
Suddenly I remembered Vanessa asking me to refill the wine beside Carlo, insisting I stand close enough to hear his question, and laughing that I barely understood English.
If somebody knew I could understand Italian, that humiliation had been more than careless cruelty.
It might have been bait.
That evening, while reviewing the event schedule, Sarah called again. Her voice shook.
"Emily, you need to see the last document Vanessa sent the planners. It wasn't just a seating chart."
"What was it?"
"A staffing instruction. It named you. It said you had to serve Carlo personally, no replacements allowed."
May you like
My mouth went dry.
I had believed I'd overheard the conspiracy by accident. Now I didn't know whether someone had deliberately placed me where I could hear it—or whether the person who did so had been trying to save Michael.
