Chapter 10: What Stefano Knew
The silence that followed was the kind that fills a room completely.
Vittorio did not move.
Domenico's pen was still.
"Say that again," Vittorio said.
"I knew someone was altering her schedule." Stefano's voice had gone flat — the flatness of a man who has been carrying something for a long time and has finally set it down, not out of courage but exhaustion.
"Not the dosages.
The timing.
Someone was adjusting when she received certain medications so that her lucid periods were shorter."
"Who?"
"A woman named Carla Ferrante hired a private nurse through a medical staffing agency.
The nurse was placed in Elena's care team in the final six weeks.
I didn't know who had arranged it until after Elena died.
By then Carla Ferrante was already ill herself."
"Carla Ferrante," Domenico said.
"Bianca's mother."
"Yes."
"Why?" Vittorio said.
"Elena had nothing to do with the Meridian asset.
That was a business arrangement.
Elena was sick.
She was dying.
What could Carla Ferrante possibly have wanted from her?"
Stefano looked at him.
"A signature."
Vittorio went very still.
"Elena had a separate trust — not the estate, a personal trust her father had established for her before your marriage.
It held the asset Bianca's family wanted.
The only way to transfer it outside of the estate process was with Elena's direct authorization." Stefano pressed his hands flat on his knees.
"Carla Ferrante believed that if Elena's lucid periods were shortened — if she was confused, exhausted, in pain — she could be guided to sign a transfer document without fully understanding what it was."
"Did she sign it?"
"No." Stefano's jaw tightened.
"I found out what was happening three days before Elena died.
I confronted the nurse.
She left that night.
I never told anyone because I couldn't prove it, and because Elena was already — she was already past the point where it mattered for her." He stopped.
"And because I was afraid of what it would mean for her memory.
For Lucy.
I didn't want Lucy to grow up knowing that people had tried to use her mother's death."
"So you protected yourself," Vittorio said quietly.
"I protected Elena's name."
"You protected yourself," Vittorio said again.
Not louder.
Just clearer.
Stefano didn't argue.
"And when Bianca came," Vittorio said, "you knew who she was."
"I suspected.
When she started appearing in your circle — yes.
I knew the name.
I didn't know how much she knew or what she'd been told."
"And you said nothing."
"I thought if I watched, I would understand what she wanted.
Whether she had the document.
Whether the nurse had kept records." He looked at Vittorio.
"I was trying to protect you."
"You were trying to protect yourself from having to tell me the truth," Vittorio said.
"There is a difference."
Stefano said nothing.
Domenico spoke carefully.
"The nurse — do you have a name?"
"It was eleven years ago."
"A name, Stefano."
He closed his eyes briefly.
"Marta.
Marta Voss.
She was German.
That's all I have."
Domenico wrote it down.
Vittorio stood.
He walked to the window.
The garden again — the same view, the same trees, the same light that had been there through all of it.
Elena had planted the roses along the far wall the spring before she got sick.
Lucy liked to sit near them in summer.
"You need to leave," Vittorio said.
He didn't turn around.
"Not from Lucy's life.
She loves you and that is not something I will take from her.
But from this house, today, now.
And you will cooperate fully with Domenico.
Every conversation, every document, every name you remember."
"And then?" Stefano asked.
"And then we find out what Renard actually documented and whether Marta Voss is findable.
And then we decide what justice looks like for Elena." He paused.
"Not for you.
Not for me.
For her."
Stefano stood.
He moved toward the door, then stopped.
"She knew," he said quietly.
"In the end — she knew something was wrong.
She told me the last time she was lucid.
She said, 'Don't let them take what's Lucy's.'" He didn't look back.
"I failed her in every way that mattered.
I know that."
He left.
The door closed.
Domenico looked at his notes for a long moment.
Then he looked up.
"Marta Voss," he said.
"If she exists and she's findable, this becomes a criminal matter."
"I know," Vittorio said.
"That changes the shape of everything."
May you like
"I know that too." Vittorio turned from the window.
"Find her."
