The Man Who Used My Father’s Voice
Chapter 09 - The Man Who Used My Father’s Voice
I climbed the cellar stairs faster than I should have.
Behind me Luca said my name, not loudly, but with enough command that my feet slowed before my pride could stop them.
“Emma.”
I turned.
“If someone knows my father’s name and comes looking for me tonight, I’m not staying in a basement.”
“I agree,” he said. “That does not mean you walk first.”
It was not romantic.
I need that understood.
A man stepping ahead of you in danger is not love. Sometimes it is training. Sometimes it is guilt. Sometimes it is simply that he knows the hallway better than you do.
But after years of carrying fear alone, it startled me to see someone put his body between me and a door without asking to own me afterward.
We reached the dining room.
The chandeliers had been dimmed. Chairs sat crooked where guests had left in a hurry. The flowers looked too white, too innocent.
Near the entrance stood a man in a brown raincoat.
He was around sixty, thin, clean-shaven, with a hat in his hands. He looked like an accountant who had slept badly for a decade. Beside him stood one of Luca’s guards, tense but not alarmed.
The man looked at me.
His eyes filled.
“Emma.”
I stopped.
No.
Not because I knew him.
Because I knew his voice.
It had come from the cassette.
For one impossible second my heart betrayed me.
“Dad?”
The man flinched as if I had struck him.
Luca stepped forward.
“Name.”
“Peter Sloane.”
“Try again.”
The man swallowed.
“I worked with Daniel Vale.”
His voice was close.
Too close.
Not my father’s exactly. But grief is a poor detective. It will chase an echo through any dark hall.
I backed up.
“You called asking for me.”
“I promised Daniel I would come if the box resurfaced.”
Mrs. Battista entered behind us and froze.
“Peter.”
He looked ashamed.
“Celia.”
“You coward.”
He nodded once.
“Yes.”
That answer silenced everyone more effectively than denial would have.
Luca watched him carefully.
“You have thirty seconds to become useful.”
Peter reached into his coat.
Marco’s hand moved.
Peter froze, then slowly removed a sealed envelope and placed it on the nearest table.
“Daniel gave me this three weeks before he died.”
“Which death?” I asked.
The bitterness in my voice surprised even me.
Peter closed his eyes.
“The real one.”
My body went cold.
“When?”
“Nine years ago in November. Not April. Not the night they told you.”
I pressed my hand against the table.
Five months.
My father had been alive for five months after I bought funeral flowers for a stranger.
Luca opened the envelope.
Inside was a small digital drive, a hospital bracelet, and a photograph.
The photograph showed my father in a narrow bed, thinner than he had been in the Midland picture, but smiling. He held up one finger as if telling the camera to wait.
On the back he had written:
I saw Emma today from across the street. She bought apples. She is taller. I did not call out. Forgive me.
Something broke in me so quietly no one heard it.
Peter spoke softly.
“He watched you when he could. From far away. He said if he came close, Bruno would know.”
“Bruno is dead,” Vanessa said from the doorway.
I had forgotten she was there.
She stood at the edge of the room with Marco’s man behind her, pale but composed again. It seemed impossible that grief had touched her only minutes ago. But some people use grief the way others use perfume: enough to influence, never enough to change.
Peter looked at her.
“Bruno is dead. His system isn’t.”
Luca picked up the digital drive.
“What’s on this?”
“Video from the old Bellarosa office. The night Lucia died. The night Daniel found the transfer. The night your father agreed to blame him if anyone asked.”
Luca’s face went still.
“My father appears on it?”
Peter nodded.
“And Bruno. And Vanessa’s mother.”
Vanessa’s eyes flickered.
Peter looked at her then with something like pity.
“Your mother tried to stop it.”
Vanessa’s mouth tightened.
“Do not speak of my mother.”
“She came back after signing. She begged Bruno to reverse the transfer. Lucia heard them arguing. That is how Lucia knew.”
“No.”
The word was barely audible.
Peter continued, and I knew he was no longer speaking for us. He was speaking because cowardice had finally become heavier than consequence.
“Your mother helped Daniel hide Lucia’s copies.”
Vanessa stared.
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s why Bruno threatened her. It’s why she died.”
“She died because Morettis ruin women.”
“She died because Bellandis punish them.”
Vanessa stepped back as if the sentence had hands.
Luca inserted the drive into a laptop Marco brought from the office.
The screen glowed.
For a few seconds there was only grainy footage: the old Bellarosa office, a desk, shadows moving.
Then a woman entered.
Lucia Moretti.
Alive, elegant, frightened, holding the same silver box.
My father followed her.
Behind them came Luca’s father.
And then Bruno Bellandi.
The audio cracked, but one sentence came through clearly.
Bruno said, “If Daniel talks, we use the girl.”
My knees nearly gave way.
Luca closed the laptop halfway, not enough to stop the video, only enough to keep the screen from swallowing us.
He looked at Vanessa.
“Your uncle threatened Emma when she was nine years old.”
Vanessa said nothing.
On the video, another voice spoke.
A woman’s voice.
Not Lucia’s.
Vanessa’s mother.
“Leave the child out of it.”
May you like
The recording continued.
And what it revealed next made Vanessa Bellandi sit down as if her bones had been cut.
