Chapter 10 - The Last Words My Wife Recorded
The phone came back from the repair specialist at noon.
I had paid enough to purchase a small house for the work, and I would have paid twice as much if it meant hearing Isabella's voice again.
The technician had recovered several photographs, old messages, and a handful of audio files.
Most were harmless.
One file was encrypted.
The technician explained that it had been created less than twelve hours before the explosion, but the recording had never been sent.
“It may be incomplete,” he warned. “The storage chip is damaged.”
I dismissed him and locked myself in the study.
For several minutes, I couldn't bring myself to press play.
Then Isabella's voice filled the room.
“Matteo, sweetheart, if you're listening to this someday, I want you to know something.”
I stopped breathing.
Her voice sounded exactly as I remembered it: warm, slightly husky, with a little laugh hidden beneath every sentence.
“You didn't do anything wrong. Whatever happens, you didn't cause it.”
I gripped the edge of the desk.
“If you remember something frightening, tell someone who will listen. You don't have to keep secrets to make the grown-ups happy.”
There was a pause.
Then she continued.
“And Vincent, if this recording reaches you, I need you to understand that I tried to tell you.”
My stomach tightened.
“I told you about the money. I told you about the men following us. I told you that Luca was changing our security arrangements. You kept telling me that you could handle it.”
A faint sound came through the speaker.
Perhaps she had been crying.
“You told me nobody could threaten your family. But you never asked whether the people inside our home were the ones we needed protection from.”
I pressed my palm against my mouth.
“I love you, Vincent. I always will. But I won't raise Matteo in a house where he thinks fear is the same thing as love.”
The recording crackled.
Then Isabella said something that shattered the last defense I had built around myself.
“I'm not leaving because I stopped loving you. I'm leaving because our son has started copying the way you look at people when they disappoint you. He's eight years old, and he already believes love is something he has to earn.”
I closed my eyes.
For fourteen months, I had blamed the bomb, my enemies, the doctors, and every person who had failed to save her.
But Isabella had been trying to save our son from something long before the explosion.
Me.
The audio broke into static.
I nearly shut it off.
Then a man's voice emerged in the background.
“Give me the files, Isabella.”
Luca.
“Not until you tell Vincent the truth,” she replied.
“You have no idea what you're doing.”
“I know exactly what I'm doing.”
A chair scraped.
Then Luca said, with terrible calm, “If you take that boy away from this family, I'll make sure you regret it.”
The recording ended.
I sat in silence until my hands stopped shaking.
Then I replayed the final thirty seconds.
Again.
And again.
It wasn't the threat that frightened me most.
It was the knowledge that Isabella had tried to warn me, and I had been too arrogant to listen.
A knock came at the door.
Clara entered carrying a glass of water.
She took one look at my face and set it down without speaking.
“She was going to leave me,” I said.
Clara remained silent.
“She believed I was hurting our son.”
“You were.”
The answer was so direct that it almost made me laugh.
Not because it was funny.
Because I had spent my entire life surrounding myself with people who would rather die than tell me something like that.
Clara pulled out a chair.
“You hurt him because you were frightened. That's an explanation, not an excuse.”
“I loved Isabella.”
“I believe you.”
“I would have died for her.”
“But you didn't know how to listen to her.”
I stared at the phone.
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Start listening now.”
She rose.
Before she reached the door, she turned back.
“Vincent, there's something else you should know.”
“What?”
“Matteo told me his mother gave him something before the explosion.”
My head snapped up.
“What something?”
“He doesn't remember exactly. He said she put something beneath his blanket and told him to hide it.”
I stood.
“Why didn't you tell me this earlier?”
“Because he was frightened, and he needed time to remember.”
“Where is it?”
“He doesn't know.”
I began searching Matteo's room immediately.
Under the mattress.
Inside the wardrobe.
Beneath the wheelchair cushion.
Nothing.
Then I noticed the old stuffed rabbit lying beside his pillow.
It had belonged to Isabella when she was a child. Matteo had refused to let anyone wash it since the accident.
I picked it up.
Something hard shifted inside its belly.
A tiny seam ran along the side.
I fetched a pair of scissors and carefully opened the stitches.
Inside lay a small brass key and a folded piece of paper.
The paper contained a single handwritten sentence.
The truth is in the room where your father kept the things he could never bear to lose.
I knew exactly which room she meant.
My father's private vault.
And as I hurried toward the stairs, my phone rang.
The caller was the security director at the Rossi Hotel.
“Mr. Rossi,” he said, his voice shaking. “We have a problem.”
“What kind?”
“Someone just accessed your wife's old room.”
I stopped.
“Is that room still sealed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then how did someone get inside?”
May you like
A long silence followed.
Then he whispered, “Because the access code was entered using your brother's credentials.”
