What My Mother Hid Beneath the Piano
Chapter 05 - What My Mother Hid Beneath the Piano
The piano belonged to my mother.
That was why nobody touched it.
Not superstition.
Memory.
She played every evening when I was little.
Mostly Chopin.
Sometimes old Italian songs my grandmother hated because she said they were “too southern.”
After my mother died, my father closed the lid.
I was six.
Nobody opened it again.
Until Sofia.
The envelope Francesca took had been taped inside the bench.
Not the piano itself.
Which meant someone expected a person to sit there one day.
Francesca had known.
I had not.
That fact hurt in a childish way.
I returned to the estate after Elena and Sofia were medically cleared.
They refused to stay there.
Reasonable.
Miriam arranged protected housing through a victim-services unit.
Not mine.
Better.
Niko was in surgery.
Bullet through soft tissue.
Lucky.
Maybe.
I entered the music room alone.
The bench lid stood open.
A rectangle of pale adhesive remained beneath.
Nothing else.
Sofia’s uneven notes seemed to hang in the room from memory.
I called Francesca.
She answered.
“Dominic.”
No surprise.
“What did you take?”
“Something your father should have given you.”
“Then why do you have it?”
“Because your mother gave it to me.”
I went still.
“You were close?”
“Closer than you remember.”
My mother, Lucia Moretti, had been Francesca’s sister-in-law.
I remembered them at holidays.
Polite.
Nothing more.
Francesca said:
“Your father isolated her.”
My jaw tightened.
“Careful.”
There.
The boy defending the dead father.
Francesca heard it.
“He taught you well.”
“Where are you?”
“Safe.”
“From me?”
“From your habits.”
Fair enough to annoy me.
“What was in the envelope?”
“Your mother’s will.”
I stopped.
“She had a will.”
“Yes.”
“My father handled probate.”
“Yes.”
“I inherited everything.”
“No.”
Silence.
Francesca continued.
“Your mother left the music conservatory trust and twenty percent of Moretti Imports to you personally.”
I frowned.
“I got the imports shares.”
“Not from her.”
My father had transferred equivalent shares from his own holding after her death.
Why?
Because Lucia’s actual shares carried a condition.
“What condition?”
Francesca hesitated.
“That you receive voting control at thirty-five only if the company had exited all illegal freight activity.”
I laughed once.
My mother had tried to write a future I never lived.
“At thirty-five?”
“You're forty.”
“Yes.”
“Exactly.”
My father suppressed the will because fulfilling it would have required separating legitimate shipping from organized crime before I inherited.
Instead, he replaced the shares.
Kept the criminal structure.
Raised me inside it.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“And did nothing?”
“I was twenty-nine. Your father threatened Salvatore’s position.”
“Uncle Salvatore?”
“Yes.”
Francesca’s husband.
She said she kept a copy.
Not enough to challenge probate at the time.
Then years later, after my father died, she found Lucia’s original envelope under the bench.
“How?”
“Your mother told me where she hid it.”
“Then why leave it there?”
“I thought you might find it.”
I looked around the silent room.
“I didn't play.”
“No.”
Sofia did.
That was the bitter joke.
A three-year-old did what no Moretti man had done in thirty-four years.
She sat down.
“What did you take today?”
“The original.”
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
“Against me?”
“Against everyone.”
I thought of Red Hook.
“You kidnapped Elena and Sofia for insurance?”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“I did not order the kidnapping.”
“You leaked the route.”
“To Niko.”
“You knew Niko was scared of Vincent.”
“Yes.”
“You knew the route would move.”
“I believed he would take them to my safe house.”
“Instead Colombo got them.”
“Yes.”
“Because your people were compromised.”
Silence.
Francesca had made a plan.
It failed.
Then she used the failure.
That mattered.
“You decided to use the kidnapping to remove me.”
She did not answer.
“Say it.”
“Yes.”
There.
“You were willing to let me think Vincent did all of it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you were already becoming impossible to remove through family governance.”
I almost laughed.
“Governance.”
“You think guns are more honest?”
“No.”
Good question.
Francesca continued.
She had watched me become my father.
Violence as enforcement.
Fear as management.
Legitimate companies tied to criminal routes.
Board members afraid to challenge me.
She believed the only way to break the structure was to force public collapse.
“So you used a child.”
Her breathing changed.
“That part was not supposed to happen.”
“But it did.”
“Yes.”
“And you adapted.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
At least.
Then:
“Dominic, you were never going to step down because I showed you a will.”
She was right.
I hated her more for being right.
“So you wanted me arrested.”
“I wanted the companies severed from you.”
“And Elena?”
“Alive.”
“Sofia?”
“Alive.”
“That is a low moral standard.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Then I asked:
“Did my mother know about my father’s property manipulations?”
Another pause.
“Some.”
“Did she know about Mateo?”
“No. She was long dead.”
“Did she know about Vincent?”
“No.”
“Then what does the will prove beyond my father lying?”
Francesca said:
“It proves your mother owned the first clean shipping company.”
“Meaning?”
“Moretti Imports was hers before marriage.”
I sat.
Like another story repeating.
Women erased from family histories.
Francesca continued.
Lucia Moretti—Lucia Ferraro before marriage—had inherited two customs brokerage licenses and a small shipping firm from her father.
My father merged them into Moretti Imports.
The family history later called him founder.
Again.
Same pattern.
My mother's property became his myth.
Her will protected the clean portion for me only if I kept it clean.
He did the opposite.
Then raised me to defend what he had transformed.
I looked at the ivory piano.
My mother had tried to leave a condition.
My father left a doctrine.
Never let anyone see what can hurt you.
One inheritance was paper.
The other lived in my nervous system.
“What do you want now?” I asked.
Francesca answered:
“The legitimate companies separated permanently.”
“And your control?”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“Independent board. Worker pension representation. No Moretti majority.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
Fair.
“Give the will to Miriam.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“After Niko wakes.”
“What does Niko have to do with it?”
Francesca went quiet.
Then:
“He knows who actually gave Vincent Colombo the nursery route.”
My body tightened.
“You said you gave it to Niko.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He did not give it to Colombo.”
“Then who?”
Francesca whispered:
“Marco.”
I closed my eyes.
Again.
“No.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“Proof?”
“Niko has it.”
The room became colder.
Marco had already admitted hiding Mateo’s death and my father’s ledger.
But kidnapping?
No.
I did not believe it.
Which meant I finally understood nothing about belief.
Francesca said:
“Ask him why he changed Sofia’s security car forty minutes before the abduction.”
The call ended.
I pulled up the route log.
Original car: armored SUV 6.
Changed to taxi because school pickup was “low-profile after media activity.”
Authorized by:
MARCO DELUCA.
My oldest friend had put Elena and Sofia into the vehicle Vincent's men intercepted.
The same man who stood beside me in the rain.
The same man who told me the Colombos were baiting me.
I called him.
No answer.
Then Dom from security called.
“Boss, Marco left.”
“When?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Hospital.”
Niko.
I was already moving.
May you like
If Francesca was right, the two men who knew the truth about Sofia’s route were about to be in the same room.
And one of them had a bullet wound.
