Chapter 8 – THE HATCH UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS

The paramedic finished wrapping my hand in fresh, sterile gauze, but I barely felt it.

I stared at the glowing screen of my phone.

“Look closer at the clinic records, Anna.”

I reached into my pocket with my good hand and pulled out the folded papers Thomas had given me. They were slightly damp from the snow, but the ink was still legible.

I scanned the first page. It was Caroline Moretti’s intake form from nine years ago, the night of the crash. Dr. Arthur Bellini was listed as the attending physician.

I flipped to the second page. The certificate of death.

It stated Caroline Moretti died of massive internal hemorrhaging. Time of death: 11:42 PM.

At the bottom of the page were two signature lines required for a private clinic to process a high-profile death without immediate police investigation.

The first signature belonged to Dr. Bellini.

I dragged my finger across the page to the second signature line—the attending nurse who supposedly witnessed the death.

The signature was cursive, elegant, and chillingly familiar.

Eleanor Whitmore.

My stomach completely dropped.

Mrs. Whitmore.

The sweet, trembling elderly woman who had exposed Vanessa at the dinner table. The woman who had cried, claiming she had been a nurse at the clinic and saved the baby from Dr. Bellini’s cruelty.

She had signed the fake death certificate.

She had been part of the conspiracy from the very first night.

“Anna? Are you alright?”

I looked up. Luca Moretti was sitting in the front passenger seat of the SUV, his shoulder heavily bandaged by the paramedics. He looked exhausted, but the fierce protectiveness in his eyes hadn’t faded as he watched Lily sleeping peacefully in the back seat beside me.

“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “Mrs. Whitmore. Where is she?”

Luca frowned, turning slightly in his seat.

“My men secured the dining room after the shootout,” Luca said. “Mrs. Whitmore was taken to the safe house downtown with the other civilian guests. Why?”

I handed the clinic records to the paramedic, gesturing for him to pass them up to Luca.

“Look at the second signature on the death certificate,” I said.

Luca took the papers. His dark eyes scanned the page.

The silence in the SUV became deafening.

“She signed it,” Luca breathed, the realization washing over him. “She didn’t just witness Caroline’s death. She authorized the cover-up.”

“She told us she saved Lily from Dr. Bellini,” I said rapidly, trying to piece the puzzle together. “But if she was part of the cover-up… why did she expose Vanessa tonight? Why did she bring the wedding ring back and blow Vanessa’s plan apart?”

Luca stared out the windshield into the dark, snowy night. The gears of the mafia boss’s mind were turning, analyzing the betrayal.

“Because Vanessa was becoming a liability,” Luca said coldly.

He turned back to me.

“Think about it, Anna. Vanessa was going to marry me. Once she was my wife, she would have unlimited access to my accounts. But she was reckless. She was arrogant. If Vanessa made a mistake and I found out about Lily, I would have killed Vanessa and Dr. Bellini.”

“But Mrs. Whitmore exposed her first,” I said.

“Exactly,” Luca said. “Mrs. Whitmore sacrificed Vanessa to gain my trust. She played the grieving, innocent mother-in-law. She handed me Vanessa on a silver platter so I wouldn’t look deeper. So I wouldn’t realize who was actually controlling the stolen Moretti offshore accounts.”

My eyes went wide. “The offshore accounts?”

“Nine years ago, Caroline was managing my private accounts,” Luca explained, his voice tight with anger. “When she died, the access codes died with her. Or so I thought.”

Suddenly, Luca’s phone rang.

He answered it on speaker. It was Marco’s second-in-command, the new head of security.

“Boss,” the guard said, his voice panicked. “We have a problem at the downtown safe house.”

“What happened?” Luca demanded.

“Mrs. Whitmore is gone,” the guard reported. “She requested to use the restroom. When she didn’t come out, we checked. The window was open. But that’s not the worst part.”

“Speak,” Luca ordered.

“Before she left, she accessed the safe house terminal,” the guard said. “She used a master encryption key. She drained the remaining three hundred million dollars from the family’s emergency reserve accounts. It’s gone, Boss. Untraceable.”

Luca closed his eyes, crushing the clinic records in his hand.

The sweet old lady hadn’t been a victim.

She was the mastermind.

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