Chapter 9 - THE MAN WHO STOOD BESIDE THE DOOR
Marco had served the Duca family for fourteen years.
He knew the estate.
The guards.
The schedules.
The children's routines.
Valentino had trusted him with everything.
Now financial records suggested Marco had received unexplained payments shortly before the fire.
Valentino did not confront him immediately.
Instead, he brought the evidence to his attorney and outside investigators.
The inquiry uncovered a network of payments linked to a rival criminal organization.
Marco had apparently been selling information.
Security schedules.
Property access details.
And the movements of people under Isabella's protection.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Annie Bell.
Valentino stared at the records.
Then whispered:
"He sold her location."
The investigators continued.
They found evidence that Annie's father had possessed records implicating several powerful criminals.
Those records were believed to have been passed to Isabella.
Someone wanted them back.
The night of the fire, Marco had been assigned to security coordination.
He claimed to have been elsewhere.
But newly recovered communications contradicted his account.
Valentino looked at Gabriel.
"Call the police."
Marco was detained for questioning after investigators presented the evidence.
He denied everything.
But one detail changed the case.
A witness reported seeing Marco speaking to a woman near the summer property shortly before the fire.
The woman was not Isabella.
Investigators located the witness.
An elderly groundskeeper.
He remembered the woman's name.
"She called herself Evelyn."
Valentino went still.
Evelyn Hart.
The former director of Isabella's charitable foundation.
May you like
The woman who had supposedly arranged Annie's placement.
And the woman who had disappeared six months after the fire.
