Chapter 5 - Celina Wasn’t the First Person to Want Grace Gone
Luciano began with the family archives.
The Moretti estate kept everything.
Property files.
Old legal correspondence.
Employee contracts.
Insurance paperwork.
Travel consents.
Household records.
His grandfather had believed destroying documents was how families lost control of history.
Ironically, keeping them was about to expose it.
Grace’s original travel authorization was missing.
The index showed it had once existed.
A scanned image remained in the digital archive.
Access logs showed three people had opened that file during the past five years.
Luciano.
His late father’s attorney.
And Marianne.
Luciano immediately looked at his aunt.
She did not flinch.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Grace called me before she disappeared.”
That was the first revelation Marianne had kept from him.
Luciano stood so quickly his chair scraped the floor.
“When?”
“Two days before you came home.”
“What did she say?”
“She was frightened.”
“Of whom?”
Marianne hesitated.
“Your father.”
Luciano went still.
His father, Aldo Moretti, had died two years earlier.
Powerful.
Rigid.
Obsessed with family reputation.
He never liked Grace.
She came from an ordinary background.
Worked as an elementary-school art teacher.
Had no interest in Moretti society.
Aldo considered her unsuitable from the beginning.
Luciano had married Grace privately anyway.
Only months later did Aldo publicly accept her.
Or pretend to.
Marianne continued.
“Grace said Aldo was pressuring her to sign papers.”
“What papers?”
“She didn’t know everything. Something about Ellie. Something about leaving the estate.”
“And you never told me?”
Marianne’s eyes filled.
“She begged me not to. She said she was trying to get proof first.”
Luciano stared at her.
“Then she vanished.”
“Yes.”
For five years, Luciano believed his wife chose to leave.
Now he learned she had called his aunt in fear forty-eight hours before disappearing.
The forged waiver suddenly felt much older than Celina.
Maybe Celina had not invented the plan.
May you like
Maybe she had found an unfinished one.
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