Chapter 8 - The Dead Woman in the Recording
Luca had spent most of his life believing his mother loved him.
Not gently.
Caterina Costello had not been a gentle woman.
But she had sat beside his hospital bed after the collapse.
She had traveled with him to specialists.
She had told him repeatedly that surviving mattered more than walking.
Now Luca watched her stand beside Dominic and Dr. Vale days before his poisoning.
The betrayal felt different from anger.
It felt like the floor had disappeared.
Elena sat beside him.
“You don’t know what she was doing there.”
Luca looked at her.
“You’re defending her?”
“I’m defending facts.”
He almost smiled.
She had learned his own rule and returned it to him.
Rebecca enhanced the remaining footage.
Caterina never touched the cooler.
She argued with Dominic.
Her gestures were sharp.
At one point she pointed directly at the vials.
Dominic slammed the cooler shut.
Then Caterina left.
The recording could mean conspiracy.
Or confrontation.
Luca hated ambiguity.
Maya did not.
“Maybe she was trying to stop him.”
Every adult looked at her.
“What?”
“If she wanted to help him, why is she yelling?”
Luca stared at the frozen image of his mother.
An hour later, Rebecca found an old bank record.
Caterina had withdrawn two hundred thousand dollars in cash the day after the recording.
Dominic deposited almost exactly that amount three days later.
Elena’s face fell.
Maya remained unconvinced.
“Money can mean lots of things.”
Luca looked toward her.
“You always argue?”
“When everyone gives up too fast.”
That evening, the story leaked.
A news website published Luca’s paternity result.
By morning, television crews surrounded Elena’s apartment.
Headlines called Maya the secret Costello heir.
Photographers waited outside her school.
People who had never met her discussed her inheritance.
Elena stood in Luca’s study shaking with fury.
“You promised she would not become an asset.”
“I didn’t release this.”
“I don’t care.”
Luca absorbed the accusation.
Because he understood it.
Elena had raised Maya in a world where groceries sometimes required counting dollars.
Now strangers were calculating the child’s net worth on television.
Maya stood silently near the window.
Then she asked Luca one question.
“Can you make them stop?”
Twelve years earlier, Luca would have known exactly how.
But the man Maya needed as a father could not become the man everyone feared.
“I can protect you,” Luca said.
“But I can’t control every person who talks.”
Maya nodded.
It was not the answer she wanted.
It was the truth.
May you like
And for once, Luca let the truth be enough.
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