Chapter 9: Her Name Was Elena
The recording lasted forty-one minutes.
Gianluca played it in his office with the door closed, Valentino and Marta Voss seated across from him, a legal pad open on the desk that he stopped writing on after the first ten minutes because he simply listened.
Loretta's voice was clear.
Unhurried.
She had known exactly what she was asking for.
She walked Renato through each document she needed — the letterhead, the filing dates, the specific financial records that would make the letters look credible.
She told him what Elena had been doing.
She told him why it needed to be stopped.
She used the word *neutralized*.
She also said something else, near the end of the recording.
*If Elena figures out what we've done and goes to Valentino, he won't believe her.
I've already started laying the groundwork.
By the time she tries to speak, he'll think she's unraveling.
Grief does that to people.
So does guilt.*
The recording ended.
The office was very quiet.
Gianluca set down his pen.
He looked at Valentino.
"That's enough," he said.
"That's more than enough."
Valentino was looking at the recorder on the desk.
His hands were flat on his knees.
"She planned it," he said.
"Not just the letters.
She planned what I would think of Elena.
She built it in advance."
"Yes."
"While Elena was alive.
While Elena was trying to protect Isolde." He stopped.
"Elena knew something was wrong.
She said so in her letter.
She came to Claudia.
She was frightened and she was right and I—" He stopped again.
"You believed what you were shown," Gianluca said carefully.
"I should have believed my wife."
Neither Marta nor Gianluca said anything.
There was nothing to say to that.
They let him hold it.
After a moment he looked up.
"File the recording with everything else," he said.
"I want it included."
"It will be." Gianluca looked at his notepad.
"With this, the criminal exposure for Loretta is significant.
Document forgery.
Potentially fraud, depending on what financial decisions were influenced.
Possibly more, depending on what the medical review turns up about Elena's final months." He paused.
"Her lawyers will try to negotiate.
They'll offer a plea arrangement.
A civil settlement.
Something that keeps it quiet."
"Let them try."
"Valentino.
I want to ask you something directly." Gianluca looked at him.
"What outcome do you want?
Not legally.
Personally."
Valentino thought about it for a moment.
"I want Isolde's name on that deed to be uncontestable," he said.
"I want the guardianship petition dismissed with prejudice.
I want the record to show who Elena actually was." He paused.
"And I want my mother to stand in a room and hear her own voice on that recording and know that I heard it too."
Gianluca nodded slowly.
"The first three I can guarantee.
The last one — I'll see what I can do."
Marta Voss stood to leave.
At the door she stopped and looked back at Valentino.
"Your wife wrote to Renato once more," she said.
"A letter he never showed Dario.
He kept it separately." She reached into her handbag and removed a single envelope.
She set it on Gianluca's desk.
"She wrote it two months before she d*ed.
Renato never replied.
He told me it was the letter that broke him.
That he read it and knew what he'd helped do and couldn't undo it." She looked at Valentino steadily.
"I think you should have it."
She left.
Valentino looked at the envelope for a long time.
His name was not on it.
It was addressed to Renato.
But Gianluca slid it across the desk without a word.
He opened it.
Elena's handwriting.
The double loop on the E.
*I don't know if you were part of what was done to me or if you simply allowed it.
Either way, I'm not writing to accuse you.
I'm writing because I want someone in that circle to know the truth before I run out of time to say it.*
*I love my husband.
I have always loved him.
I was not leaving.
I was not disloyal.
I was trying to make sure our daughter would be safe after I was gone, because I knew — I think I have known for a while — that I am running out of time.*
*If you have any decency left, keep this letter.
And if the day ever comes when Isolde needs someone to tell the truth about her mother, I hope you will.*
*Her name was Elena.
She was not what they told you.*
He folded the letter.
He held it in both hands.
Outside Gianluca's window, the city moved the way cities do — indifferent, continuous, unconcerned with any single grief.
Valentino sat with his wife's last letter in his hands and let himself feel the full weight of what had been taken from him.
May you like
Then he put the letter carefully in his inside pocket, close to his chest.
And he stood up.
