Chapter 5 - The Chemical Blueprint|
Vincent picked up the plastic cap using a clean silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. He rose and walked to the wall safe hidden behind a seventeenth-century oil painting of the Bay of Naples.
He spun the combination dial. The heavy steel door swung open.
Inside the safe were three items: two million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds, a nickel-plated Beretta pistol, and a small black leather journal that belonged to his late father, Lorenzo Moretti.
Beside the journal sat a small wooden rack meant for storing antique vials. One of the slots was empty.
Vincent’s breath hitched.
The poison hadn't been brought into the house by Julianna. It had been stored inside his own safe for over fifteen years.
It was Aconitum Napellus—a rare, highly concentrated odorless alkaloid extracted by his father’s personal physician in the late 1990s. In small doses, it did not kill immediately. Instead, it induced severe cardiac arrhythmia, confusion, and eventually a fatal stroke that no standard autopsy could distinguish from natural heart failure.
Vincent stared at the empty slot. Only two people had ever known the combination to this safe.
Himself.
And his younger brother, Marco.
Marco, who managed the family’s legitimate real estate holdings in New York. Marco, who had argued vehemently against Vincent’s decision to marry Julianna Vance six months ago, claiming the Vance family was too close to the federal prosecutors.
Vincent closed the safe door with a heavy thud, his mind racing through the terrifying pieces of the puzzle.
If Marco gave Julianna the combination to the safe... and Julianna put the poison in his food... then the murder was never meant to look like an assassination.
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It was meant to look like Vincent had suffered a sudden, tragic heart attack three months before his wedding, leaving his vast fortune, his legal assets, and the Moretti empire entirely in the hands of his surviving brother.
And Julianna? She wasn't an assassin. She was a pawn being used to clear the board.
