Chapter 4 - The Phoenix in the Dark
By midnight, the basement beneath the estate was no longer a medical wing.
It had reverted to its original purpose—the purpose for which Alessandro’s grandfather had built it during the turf wars of 1978.
I sat in a wheelchair in the observation room behind a one-way mirror, wearing my thick robe, a warm fleece blanket tucked around my legs. Dr. Rossi stood beside me with a syringe of epinephrine and a portable oxygen tank, monitoring my pulse every five minutes.
“You shouldn't be down here, Clara,” Dr. Rossi murmured, adjusting my IV line. “Stress triggers aconite relapse. Your heart cannot handle an adrenaline spike.”
“If I stay upstairs, I’ll tear this house apart myself,” I said. My voice was stronger now, though my skin was still pale. “I want to see her face.”
On the other side of the glass, Victoria Moretti sat in a heavy steel chair bolted to the concrete floor.
She didn't look like a woman who had been dragged out of her penthouse in her nightgown. She wore an immaculate silk skirt suit, her dark hair swept back into a high twist, held in place by the silver and ruby phoenix clip Emma had described. Her posture was regal, her chin raised in defiance, though her wrist bore red marks from where Marco’s men had zip-tied her hands behind her back.
Beside her, kneeling on the cold floor, was Jean-Luc Dupont—the executive pastry chef of Il Cielo.
He was blubbering, his chef’s whites soaked in sweat, his face swollen from three hours in the back of a Moretti supply van.
Alessandro stood in front of them, illuminated by a single hanging bulb. He wasn't holding a weapon. He didn't have his coat on. He simply stood with his hands behind his back, staring down at his sister-in-law.
“Alessandro, this is an absurdity!” Victoria spat, her voice echoing through the intercom speakers in my observation room. “Your men dragged me out of my home like a common criminal! On whose authority? Yours? You think because Richard is dead you own his family?”
Alessandro didn't answer her. He turned his gaze to the chef.
“Jean-Luc,” Alessandro said softly.
The chef flinched as if he had been struck with a whip. “Mr. Moretti! Please! I didn't know! She told me it was a sedative! She said... she said your fiancée was an undercover federal informant! She said you were in danger!”
Victoria’s head snapped toward the chef, her eyes flashing with lethal fury. “Shut your mouth, you fool!”
“She gave me fifty thousand dollars!” Jean-Luc wept, his forehead touching the dusty concrete floor. “She showed me pictures of Miss Clara meeting with federal agents at the coffee shop near the pier! I thought... I thought I was helping the family!”
Inside the observation room, I leaned forward, my hands gripping the armrests of my wheelchair.
Federal agents.
Two months ago, I had met with Special Agent David Vance of the Waterfront Commission—not to betray Alessandro, but to finalize the legal surrender of four abandoned piers that Alessandro wanted cleared from his corporate tax registry. I had conducted the meeting openly, with Alessandro’s full knowledge.
Victoria had taken photographs of that meeting, cropped out Alessandro’s corporate lawyer, and used them to convince a greedy pastry cook that I was a rat.
“The aconite,” Alessandro said to the cook, his voice smooth and terrifyingly flat. “Where did you get it?”
“She gave it to me!” Jean-Luc screamed, pointing his bound thumbs toward Victoria. “In a little blue dropper bottle! She told me to put three drops into the raspberry sauce on the left dish! She said... she said you always let her eat first because she loved the fruit!”
Alessandro turned back to Victoria.
For ten seconds, no one spoke. The only sound was the chef’s ragged sobbing and the hum of the ventilation fans overhead.
“You tried to kill Clara,” Alessandro said softly.
“She’s a nobody!” Victoria shouted, her composure finally shattering into jagged, ugly pieces. “She’s a middle-class accountant from Jersey! You were supposed to marry Francesca Delacroix! You were supposed to unite the shipping lines! Instead, you brought this... this clerk into Richard’s house! You gave her access to the family trusts! You gave her the keys to Julian’s inheritance!”
“Julian is fourteen years old,” Alessandro said.
“He is Richard’s son!” Victoria screamed, her face twisting into a hideous mask of rage. “He is the rightful heir to the Moretti name! Not you! Not your Jersey whore! You took Richard’s seat before his body was even cold in the ground! And now you’re going to leave everything to her?”
Alessandro stepped closer to her chair. He leaned down until his face was inches from hers.
“I didn't take Richard’s seat, Victoria,” Alessandro whispered. “Richard gave it to me three days before he died in Miami. Do you know why?”
Victoria glared at him, her lips pressed into a thin, white line.
“Because Richard knew you were sleeping with Marcus Delacroix,” Alessandro revealed, his voice dropping into a register that made even Dr. Rossi gasp beside me in the observation room. “He knew you were selling ship manifests to the Miami cartel to pay off your gambling debts at the casino in Nassau. Richard was going to alter his will the week he was killed.”
Victoria’s eyes widened in genuine, paralyzing horror. “That’s... that’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie,” Alessandro said, pulling a folded sheet of yellowed paper from his pocket and dropping it into her lap. “That’s the original codicil Richard drafted in his own handwriting. He left you a trust fund of fifty thousand dollars a year and stripped you of all managerial control over the shipping lines. I suppressed it for four years to protect Julian from the shame of knowing his mother was a traitor.”
Victoria stared down at the paper. The color drained from her face so fast she looked like a corpse sitting in the steel chair.
“I protected you,” Alessandro said, his tone devoid of all pity. “I gave you a five-million-dollar penthouse in Soho. I paid Julian’s tuition at the best academy in Switzerland. I let you keep your jewels, your cars, your status. And in return... you put aconite in my wife’s food.”
“Alessandro...” Victoria’s voice lost its sharp edge, dropping into a desperate, panicked whimper. “Alessandro, please... for Richard’s sake... for Julian...”
Alessandro didn't answer her. He turned toward the one-way mirror, looking directly into my eyes through the dark glass.
May you like
He couldn't see me, but he knew I was there.
He lifted his hand, made a single gesture toward Marco, and walked out of the room, leaving Victoria Moretti alone with her terror and the blubbering cook on the cold floor.
