Chapter 5 - The Accident Alexander Couldn’t RememberAlexander stared at his mother.
“What?”
Isabella cried.
“Ten years ago, three days before I disappeared, Victor came to me.”
“With what?”
“Photographs.”
A destroyed car.
A dead young man.
Alexander’s watch found at the scene.
His fingerprints inside the vehicle.
Alexander shook his head.
“I don’t remember any accident.”
“That was the problem.”
Victor claimed Alexander had driven drunk after a private party.
A young employee named Ethan Cole died.
Alexander supposedly survived, panicked, and called Victor.
Victor covered it up.
“I never called him.”
“I know that now.”
“But you believed him?”
“You had been drinking that night.”
Alexander remembered the party.
Barely.
He woke the following morning in his apartment with no memory of several hours.
Victor told him he had simply been exhausted.
Isabella continued.
Victor threatened to send evidence to police unless she surrendered voting rights.
She agreed.
Then she began investigating.
She discovered Ethan Cole had not died in the location Victor claimed.
He had been killed hours earlier.
Alexander had been drugged.
His watch stolen.
The entire accident was staged.
“Why frame me?”
“To control me through you.”
Alexander felt sick.
Then Isabella discovered something even worse.
Ethan worked in Morelli Global accounting.
He had found the same shell companies Lorenzo discovered years earlier.
Victor eliminated a second whistleblower.
Isabella arranged to meet Samuel Reid.
Then came her staged car crash.
Alexander sat silently.
Ten years of his life had been built around manufactured grief.
His mother’s death.
His uncle’s loyalty.
Even a missing night he had been taught not to question.
“What happened to Ethan’s family?”
Isabella lowered her eyes.
“They were told it was a random hit-and-run.”
Alexander stood.
“We find them.”
Ethan’s younger sister, Natalie Cole, was thirty-two.
She lived outside Boston.
When Alexander arrived, she nearly slammed the door.
“You people have done enough.”
Alexander stopped.
“What do you mean?”
“Morelli lawyers paid my parents after Ethan died.”
Alexander knew nothing about it.
“They made them sign confidentiality papers.”
“Who?”
“Victor Morelli.”
Natalie possessed something Ethan mailed to her the week before his death.
A USB drive.
She had never opened it because Victor’s attorney told the family it contained stolen company information and possessing it could lead to prosecution.
Alexander almost laughed at the cruelty.
Victims frightened into protecting criminals.
The drive contained internal emails.
One was between Ethan and DeLuca.
I know what Victor is doing. If the board ignores this, I’m going outside the company.
Then another message.
Victor to his security chief:
Handle E before he becomes another Lorenzo.
Another Lorenzo.
The phrase transformed suspicion into pattern.
Alexander gave the drive to investigators.
Within twenty-four hours, Victor’s former security chief, Thomas Kane, was detained.
Kane was sixty-eight.
He had cancer.
And apparently no intention of protecting Victor anymore.
He confessed.
Ethan was drugged.
Placed in the vehicle.
Killed in a staged crash.
Alexander’s watch was planted.
“Did Victor order it?”
Kane stared at the table.
“Yes.”
“What about my father?”
Silence.
Alexander repeated:
“What about Lorenzo?”
Kane closed his eyes.
“Victor didn’t intend for him to die that night.”
Alexander almost laughed.
Everyone kept saying that.
Not intended.
Not planned.
As though accidental murder created less grief.
Kane explained Victor bribed Lorenzo’s doctor to increase medication enough to make him confused during an upcoming board meeting.
Victor intended to have Lorenzo temporarily removed.
But the dose triggered his heart condition.
Lorenzo died.
Victor panicked.
Then realized death solved more problems than incapacity.
He covered everything.
Alexander left the interview room feeling hollow.
His uncle had not stabbed Lorenzo.
Had not pulled a trigger.
He had simply decided his brother’s health was a tool.
The consequence was death.
The same logic had governed everything afterward.
People were pieces.
Isabella.
Ethan.
Alexander.
Even Victor’s own brother.
Then investigators received an alert.
Victor’s private jet had filed a flight plan.
Destination:
Argentina.
Alexander looked at Claire.
“He’s running.”
But the jet never left.
Because Victor was not on it.
The flight was a distraction.
His phone had already gone dark.
His house was empty.
Then Sofia called Alexander.
Her voice was shaking.
“Mr. Morelli…”
“What?”
“Someone is inside the mansion.”
Alexander went still.
“Where are you?”
“Kitchen.”
“Leave.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
May you like
She whispered:
“He has your mother.”
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