Chapter 9 - The Lie Under Oath.
Everyone turned toward the corners of the room.
Luca saw the camera first.
It was smaller than a shirt button and hidden inside the plastic housing of a smoke detector.
Marco climbed onto a chair and removed it carefully.
The device was transmitting wirelessly.
Dr. Hale ordered the entire floor searched.
Emily felt violated in a way she could not explain.
Someone had watched her feed Grace.
Someone had watched her cry.
Someone had watched Luca open the Morelli archive.
"They know everything now."
Luca looked at the tiny camera.
"Not everything."
"What don't they know?"
"What we're going to do next."
Vanessa insisted Richard was alive.
Luca was not convinced.
"A message isn't a heartbeat."
"I've heard his voice."
"Voices can be copied."
Vanessa looked offended.
"I knew that man for fifteen years."
Emily watched her.
"How exactly did you know him?"
Vanessa went still.
Luca noticed.
"Answer her."
Vanessa sat down.
"I worked for Richard before I worked for Nathan."
"Doing what?"
"Legal strategy."
"You were twenty-two in that photograph."
Vanessa's eyes dropped.
"I did more than legal work."
Emily understood before she said it.
"You were with him."
Vanessa nodded.
The red dress, Nathan, the trust, the lies, and the missing footage rearranged themselves in Emily's mind.
"And then you started sleeping with his son."
Vanessa's shame lasted only a moment.
"I started protecting his son."
Luca opened another envelope from the archive.
Inside was a sworn statement signed by Vanessa nine years earlier.
She had testified that Richard Cole ordered illegal surveillance on several employees and used Vittorio Morelli's company to intimidate them.
Vanessa stared at her own signature.
"I thought that was destroyed."
Luca read the final paragraph.
Then he looked up.
"You lied under oath."
Vanessa's face tightened.
"I was forced to."
The statement said Richard had never threatened her.
The attached handwritten note from Vittorio said the opposite.
RICHARD OWNS HER THROUGH FEAR.
Emily's anger softened only slightly.
"What does this have to do with Grace?"
Vanessa looked toward the baby.
"Richard believed blood was ownership."
She explained that the trust had been created after Nathan nearly destroyed the company with gambling debts and reckless investments.
Richard wanted the next generation protected from him.
But once Richard disappeared, someone began changing the trust's supporting records.
"Someone wants Grace because controlling her means controlling the trustee."
Emily looked at Luca.
"You."
Luca nodded.
His phone vibrated.
It was an unknown number.
He answered without speaking.
A distorted male voice came through the speaker.
"Mr. Morelli."
Luca's expression turned cold.
"Who is this?"
"A man who remembers your father."
"Then remember what happened to him."
The voice chuckled.
"Your father died because he tried to protect the wrong child."
Luca's eyes flickered.
Emily noticed immediately.
"What child?"
The voice continued.
"Ask Luca about the girl in Room 417."
The call ended.
Emily looked at Luca.
His face had gone completely still.
"Who was in Room 417?"
May you like
Luca closed his eyes for one second.
"My sister."
