Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO OWNED THE BOX
The bank address led to a private vault beneath a financial institution on LaSalle Street. The receipt was dated four days before my parents died. The account had been opened in Alessandro Vitali's name when he was twenty-seven.
I read it three times.
“Why would my father put evidence in a box owned by Alessandro?” I asked.
Liam paced the small room. “Maybe he didn't know it was Alessandro's account.”
“The receipt has his name.”
“Maybe your father was trying to get the records to him.”
“Why?”
“Because he thought Alessandro might be different from the people running the company.”
I laughed bitterly. “You think a billionaire's son is going to help us expose his own family?”
“I think your father might have known something we don't.”
I looked at the silver key. “Then we find out.”
Liam shook his head. “Not without a plan.”
“We don't have time for a plan.”
“We have a baby to think about.”
The words stopped me.
He looked almost apologetic. “I know you don't want to hear it. But we can't walk into a vault while people are following us.”
“I know.”
“Then let me make a call.”
He contacted a lawyer he trusted, a woman named Naomi Brooks who had represented whistleblowers in corporate investigations. Naomi agreed to meet us at a small office near the river. She listened without interrupting, then examined the bank receipt and the key.
“This is not a standard safe deposit receipt,” she said. “It's a private archive account. Access requires the key, identification, and a secondary authorization.”
“Whose authorization?” Liam asked.
Naomi turned the receipt over. A handwritten code had been added to the back.
“Vitali.”
I felt the room narrow.
“Alessandro has to come with us?”
“Possibly. Or someone with delegated authority.”
“Can we get a court order?”
“Not without evidence of what is inside. And if someone inside the bank is compromised, a court order might alert the wrong people.”
Naomi looked at me carefully. “You said the child's father is Alessandro Vitali?”
I nodded.
“Does he know you're pregnant?”
“No.”
“Does he know your real identity?”
“No.”
Naomi folded her hands. “Then you need to decide whether you want him involved before someone else makes that decision for you.”
I stared at the receipt.
“I don't know him.”
“You spent a night with him.”
“That isn't the same thing.”
“No,” Naomi said. “It isn't. But he may be the only person who can open that box.”
Liam looked away.
Naomi continued. “I can arrange a meeting with him through his office. I won't tell him about the pregnancy unless you authorize me. But I won't pretend the danger is small.”
I thought about the two pink lines. I thought about a child who would inherit a name powerful enough to attract enemies before they could even speak.
“Set up the meeting,” I said.
Liam stood. “Emma—”
“I have to know what my father left behind.”
Naomi nodded. “Then we do this carefully.”
She made one call. Ten minutes later, Alessandro's chief of staff returned the message.
Mr. Vitali would meet me at noon.
Not at his office. Not at the hotel.
At his private residence on the Gold Coast.
I almost refused.
Then another message arrived on my phone, from a number I didn't recognize.
If you go to Alessandro, tell him the truth about the child. He has a right to know.
A second message followed.
But remember what his father did to yours.
I looked at Naomi.
She read the message and went very still.
“Who is his father?” I asked.
“Matteo Vitali,” she said. “The chairman. The man who built the current empire.”
“What did he do to mine?”
Naomi looked at Liam.
May you like
Neither answered.
And suddenly I understood that the story I had been told about my parents' accident was only the smallest part of what had happened.
