His telephone rang.
Vittorio.
Dante answered.
"Uncle."
"Come to the house."
"Why?"
"Because I have heard some interesting things about a waitress."
Dante closed his eyes.
"She's not part of this."
Vittorio laughed.
"Everything is part of this."
"Leave her alone."
A pause.
Then Vittorio spoke.
"You sound like your father."
Dante's expression hardened.
"Don't."
"Come home, Dante."
The call ended.
***
Vittorio Vitale lived in the original family residence.
It was older than Dante's estate and far less welcoming.
Dark wooden walls.
Heavy curtains.
Portraits of dead men.
A large staircase that seemed designed to make visitors feel small.
Dante arrived alone.
Vittorio was waiting in the library.
He was seventy-one, silver-haired, and still carried himself like a man who expected the world to move around him.
"You look tired," Vittorio said.
"Busy night."
"I heard about the girl."
"Her name is Elena."
Vittorio poured two glasses of whiskey.
"Isabella's daughter."
Dante didn't move.
"You knew?"
Vittorio handed him a glass.
"I knew Isabella had a child."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you were young."
"I'm thirty-two."
"Exactly. Still young enough to make mistakes."
Dante placed the glass on the table.
"Did you kill my father?"
Vittorio stopped moving.
The silence was immediate.
Then he laughed.
"That's a serious accusation."
"Answer me."
Vittorio studied him.
"Your father was a good man."
"That wasn't my question."
"He believed he could change things."
Dante stepped closer.
"And?"
Vittorio looked at the fireplace.
"Some men are not permitted to change."
Dante felt something inside him go cold.
"You ordered it."
Vittorio's expression hardened.
"I protected this family."
"You murdered its head."
"I kept it alive."
"By lying to me?"
"By giving you a future."
Dante stared at him.
Vittorio moved toward the desk.
"Do you think your father would have wanted you to destroy everything he built?"
Dante answered quietly.
"I think he would have wanted me to know who killed him."
Vittorio looked at him for a long moment.
Then he said something that Dante would remember for the rest of his life.
"Your father died because he loved a woman who believed the truth was worth more than blood."
Dante's hands tightened.
"Don't speak about her."
"Why? Because you think you're protecting her daughter?"
Vittorio smiled.
"You're not protecting Elena Rossi, Dante."
He leaned forward.
"You're protecting the ghost of your father."
***
Elena was in the garden when Dante returned.
She was sitting beside the fountain, holding the letter.
He approached without speaking.
She looked up.
"What happened?"
Dante sat beside her.
"My uncle knows about you."
"Does he know about the letter?"
"Yes."
Elena lowered her eyes.
"Then we should leave."
"No."
She turned.
"No?"
"Leaving won't solve anything."
"Then what will?"
Dante looked at the water.
"The truth."
Elena gave a small, bitter laugh.
"Your family seems to have a complicated relationship with that."
He accepted the remark.
Then he said something unexpected.
"I don't know if I can trust my own uncle."
Elena studied him.
"That's difficult."
"Yes."
"How long have you known him?"
"All my life."
"And now?"
"Now I have to decide whether loyalty means protecting him or stopping him."
Elena looked at the letter.
"My mother already made that choice."
Dante turned toward her.
"She chose the truth."
"She chose us."
He nodded.
"Perhaps those were the same thing."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Elena asked:
"Why did you help me?"
Dante looked at her.
"Because Alessandro was threatening you."
"That's not enough."
He considered the question.
"My father spent the last years of his life looking for your mother. He never found her. I think part of him believed he had failed her."
Elena looked away.
"And you think saving me makes up for that?"
"No."
Dante's voice softened.
"I think some debts should be paid even when the person who created them is gone."
Elena looked at him.
For the first time, she saw something beneath the authority and control.
Grief.
Not the dramatic kind.
The quiet kind that had been carried for so long that it had become part of a man's posture.
She looked down at her hands.
"Then help me finish what she started."
Dante nodded.
"I will."
***
The next two days were spent gathering evidence.
Gabriel contacted old associates.
Elena searched through her mother's documents.
Dante examined financial records that had been hidden in the family archive.
Slowly, a pattern emerged.
Twenty years earlier, Vittorio had arranged a secret agreement with the Moretti family.
The agreement had involved the transfer of several businesses and the elimination of Lorenzo Vitale.
But the plan had failed.
Lorenzo survived the first attempt.
Isabella discovered the document.
And Alessandro's father had ordered the search for her.
The families had spent years blaming each other while Vittorio quietly consolidated control.
The document was still missing.
But Elena had something more valuable.
A second envelope.
It contained a list of names.
At the bottom was a location.
THE OLD OPERA HOUSE.
Dante recognized it immediately.