Chương 13
Isabella read the headline once and shut off the phone.
Her mother sat across the kitchen table, cutting green beans with more force than necessary.
“They call a six-week pregnancy an heir,” Teresa said. “It does not have elbows.”
“It probably has the beginning of elbows.”
“Then it has more elbows than sense around it.”
Isabella smiled despite herself.
Federal protection had placed an agent in an unmarked car outside. The curtains remained closed. Teresa complained that the house smelled stale, then refused to open a window because photographers were waiting.
Elena stayed in the upstairs guest room. She visited Carlo at the hospital under escort and returned each evening exhausted. Their conversations were private. Sometimes she came down red-eyed. Sometimes she made soup at midnight as though chopping vegetables could impose order on the family.
Lorenzo was held at a federal detention center.
His attorney carried letters between him and Isabella because direct communication remained limited and monitored. The first letter contained no declarations.
I have told them about the ports, the cash businesses, the judges, and the officers Dominic paid. Claire says naming people is not enough; I must provide proof. She is correct.
Carlo’s account is accurate.
I do not ask you to visit.
Isabella read the letter, folded it, and placed it in a drawer beneath dish towels.
The second arrived three days later.
I remembered that Matteo disliked the olives served at our wedding. He put six of them in my coat pocket while I was speaking with the priest. I found them that night.
I never told you because I did not want to give him credit for making me laugh.
I should have.
She placed that letter in the same drawer.
The third included a list of account numbers and a request that she give them to her attorney. By then, she had retained her own lawyer, a former federal prosecutor named Daniel Ross who wore inexpensive suits and spent twenty minutes explaining why he charged by the hour.
The accounts contained funds Lorenzo had set aside in Isabella’s name.
Daniel advised her not to touch the money until investigators determined its source.
“Some may be legitimate,” he said. “Some may not. At the moment, every dollar connected to your husband is a question.”
“I have personal savings.”
“How much?”
She told him.
“That will cover several months of legal fees and ordinary expenses if you are careful.”
“I have never been careful with money.”
“Now is an excellent time to become irritatingly careful.”
Her foundation credit cards stopped working that afternoon. The board placed her on temporary leave. Two members issued statements claiming they had no knowledge of criminal activity. A third resigned.
The hospital wing bearing the DeSantis name covered the lettering with temporary canvas.
Public opinion did not divide neatly. Some people treated Isabella as a victim. Others called her complicit. Commentators replayed photographs of charity galas and asked how a wife could fail to know what financed her dresses.
She asked herself the same question without television assistance.
She had known enough to avoid asking. Lorenzo’s businesses produced wealth too easily. Men arrived at odd hours and used the library with the doors closed. Once, she had found blood on a cuff and accepted his explanation about a broken wineglass.
Love had not blinded her completely. It had taught her which direction not to look.
Nadia visited Teresa’s house on the tenth day. She brought Matteo’s old laptop in a grocery bag and apologized for waiting.
“I was scared,” she said.
Teresa answered, “Everyone was scared. Sit down.”
Nadia had cut her hair since the funeral. She looked older and smaller without Matteo beside her. For years, Isabella had resented her for surviving him in a way that remained separate from the Bellini family. Now the resentment felt petty, but it did not disappear merely because Isabella disapproved of it.
They drank coffee at the kitchen table.
“He called me that night,” Nadia said. “I didn’t answer.”
Isabella waited.
“We had fought. He accused me of reading his messages. I accused him of acting like his paranoia made him interesting. He left three voicemails. I listened the next morning.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I did. A detective told me the messages were vague. Then a man came to my office and said Matteo had stolen confidential foundation documents. He knew my father’s address.”
“Dominic?”
“I never saw him before.”
She opened the laptop. “But I saw him on the news yesterday. It was him.”
Inside Matteo’s files, investigators found email drafts, scanned invoices, and a calendar notation marking a meeting with Victor Salerno, the missing accountant.
Victor was not in federal custody.
Dominic had lied about that too.
Three days later, Victor’s body was found in a submerged vehicle in New Jersey.
The discovery changed the investigation. Authorities classified Dominic as a fugitive considered armed and dangerous. News vans multiplied. Teresa started leaving the television off.
Lorenzo’s fourth letter arrived after Victor’s death.
Victor agreed to provide records if I guaranteed his son would keep his job. I told him I could not make that guarantee. Dominic must have learned about the approach.
I should have moved sooner.
This sentence is not an excuse.
Isabella carried the letter in her bag for two days before replying.
Matteo said you believed being less cruel than other men made you good.
Were you cooperating because you were sorry, or because you were losing control?
Lorenzo’s answer came the next week.
Both.
She read it in the waiting room of an obstetrician chosen by the government security team. A daytime talk show played silently above a table of outdated magazines.
Her mother sat beside her knitting a yellow scarf.
“For whom?” Isabella asked.
“The baby.”
“A newborn cannot wear that.”
“Then it will wait.”
“It may be six feet long by the time you finish.”
Teresa examined the uneven rows. “It has mistakes.”
May you like
“It has character.”
“That is what people say about mistakes they intend to keep.”
