Chapter 4 - The Uncle
Enzo did not believe Charles.
Not immediately.
Men in his world survived by distrusting convenient truths.
And nothing was more convenient than an enemy accusing a dead man who could not defend himself.
Still, something had shifted.
Memories he had ignored for twenty-three years began rearranging themselves.
His father, Lorenzo Marchetti, had been forty-six when his car exploded beneath an elevated train line.
Police blamed a rival crew from Detroit.
Two suspects were found dead within a month.
Vittorio avenged his brother.
At least, that was the story Enzo had been raised to believe.
“What proof do you have?” Enzo asked.
Charles sat down again.
“None that you will like.”
“Try me.”
“Thomas had recordings.”
Adeline stepped forward.
“My father never mentioned recordings.”
“He wouldn’t have.”
Charles looked at her with an expression that seemed almost apologetic.
“He stopped trusting everyone.”
“You especially?”
“Yes.”
That admission surprised the room.
Camilla stared at her father.
Charles ignored her.
“Thomas believed Vittorio was laundering money through hospital construction contracts.”
Enzo remembered the hospitals.
Three had been built in the early 2000s.
Public money.
Private contractors.
Marchetti-connected concrete companies.
Charles continued.
“Your father discovered Vittorio was skimming from his own people and secretly selling information to federal investigators about rival organizations.”
Enzo’s jaw tightened.
“Lorenzo confronted him.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I was there.”
Adeline’s eyes sharpened.
“Room 417.”
Charles nodded.
“Thomas arranged the meeting.”
Camilla sat very still.
Enzo asked, “What happened?”
“Your father wanted out.”
“Out of what?”
“Everything.”
Charles looked around the study.
“This house.”
“The businesses.”
“The organization.”
“He wanted to make a deal with federal prosecutors, take you and your mother, and disappear.”
Enzo felt something inside him tear open.
His mother had died two years after Lorenzo.
Official cause: complications from pneumonia.
She had spent those two years barely speaking.
Enzo had always thought grief had destroyed her.
Now he wondered whether fear had.
“And Vittorio found out,” Enzo said.
Charles nodded.
Three days later, Lorenzo’s car exploded.
Eighteen months after that, Thomas Vale died on Lake Michigan.
Six months later, Charles Ashford won his first Senate race.
The pattern was so clean it felt rehearsed.
Enzo moved toward the window.
Outside, Chicago glowed beyond the estate walls.
His entire life existed because of the man he was now being told had murdered his father.
Behind him, Adeline spoke.
“Why were you part of it?”
Charles remained silent.
She stepped closer.
“Why?”
“I was ambitious.”
The senator finally looked at her.
“I was thirty-eight years old.”
“I had donors demanding favors.”
“I had debts.”
“Vittorio offered to erase them.”
“So you sold my father?”
“No.”
Charles’s voice cracked for the first time.
“I gave Vittorio one piece of information.”
Adeline stared at him.
“What information?”
“Where Thomas kept a copy of his evidence.”
Her face drained of color.
Charles looked down.
“I thought they would steal it.”
“I didn’t know they would kill him.”
Adeline’s voice shook.
“You knew what kind of men they were.”
“Yes.”
“Then you knew.”
Charles closed his eyes.
Camilla looked disgusted.
“Father.”
He turned toward her.
She stood slowly.
“All those speeches.”
“Camilla—”
“All those campaigns about integrity.”
“It was complicated.”
“You built your career on the death of her father.”
Charles stood.
“I built my career despite a mistake I made eighteen years ago.”
Adeline moved so quickly that Marco almost intervened.
She stopped inches from the senator.
“A mistake is missing an appointment.”
Her voice was low.
“A mistake is forgetting an anniversary.”
“You handed a killer the address of my father’s evidence.”
Charles met her eyes.
“And I have regretted it every day.”
“Good.”
Adeline stepped back.
“I hope you regret it in court.”
Camilla laughed bitterly.
“Court?”
Everyone looked at her.
She wiped at her eyes.
“You think any of this reaches court?”
Enzo turned.
Camilla’s expression had changed again.
The spoiled socialite was gone.
Something colder remained.
“You’re all standing here talking about Vittorio like he is dead.”
Enzo’s eyes narrowed.
“He is.”
Camilla looked at him.
“No.”
Silence.
Adeline stared at her.
Camilla smiled faintly.
“Vittorio Marchetti is very much alive.”
Enzo did not move.
“He died twelve years ago.”
“That is what he wanted you to believe.”
Camilla looked toward her father.
Charles lowered his head.
And Enzo understood that the senator was afraid again.
Not of him.
Of someone else.
May you like
Camilla delivered the truth with quiet satisfaction.
“My father has been meeting with your uncle twice a year for the last decade.”
