Chapter 3 - The Red Woman Never Needed Belini’s Face

Luca did not ask Dario whether Alessandra was alive.

He asked where the money went next.

Dario shook his head.

“I never saw beyond the reserve account.”

“You moved millions.”

“I moved instructions.”

“That distinction may matter to your lawyer.”

Dario went pale.

Belini folded her arms.

“For once, I agree with him.”

Luca looked at her.

“You suppressed employee complaints.”

Her expression tightened.

“I told staff to stop creating noise before I knew what the issue was.”

“That is not a defense.”

“No.”

For the first time, she did not pretend it was.

Emma noticed.

Belini continued.

“Alcázar handled staffing for three estates. Complaints came through my committee. Dario said employees misunderstood standard deductions.”

“And you believed him.”

“I wanted to.”

That answer sounded more honest than anything else she had said all morning.

Luca turned back to Dario.

“What did the woman want besides money?”

Dario swallowed.

“Access.”

“To what?”

“Vendor records. old property ledgers. domestic staffing schedules.”

Marco frowned.

“Why staffing schedules?”

“I don’t know.”

Emma did.

Or thought she did.

“She was looking for people who had worked here before she died.”

Luca looked at her.

Emma continued.

“If Alessandra wanted money, she already had shell companies. Why risk stealing from housekeepers?”

Dario looked at her.

“She asked me which staff had served the Moretti family more than ten years.”

Silence.

Marco opened the roster.

Eight names.

Three retired.

Two dead.

Three still employed.

One of them was Rosa Marin, Luca’s former childhood nanny.

Luca’s face changed.

“Where is Rosa?”

“At the Lake Como property,” Marco said.

“No.”

Emma looked at him.

“What?”

“She left that house four years ago.”

Marco checked again.

The current system still listed Rosa there.

Wrong.

Someone had preserved an outdated employee record.

Another ghost in the system.

Luca called Rosa personally.

She answered from Bologna.

Alive.

Confused.

Unaware her name remained active.

“Did Alessandra ever contact you?” Luca asked.

Long pause.

“Yes.”

Luca closed his eyes.

“When?”

“Six months ago.”

The same month.

“What did she say?”

Rosa began crying.

“She said not to tell you.”

Belini looked away.

Luca’s voice softened.

“Tell me now.”

“She asked about your father’s last months.”

Luca went still.

“What about them?”

“Who visited. who handled medication. who changed the household accounts.”

Marco was already taking notes.

“Why?”

Rosa whispered, “She said your father did not die from his heart.”

Silence.

Luca’s father had died five years earlier.

Heart failure.

Private physician.

Private funeral.

No autopsy.

Emma felt cold.

Another death inside the Moretti family.

Another file nobody questioned.

Luca spoke carefully.

“Did she say who she suspected?”

“No.”

“Did she ask about payroll?”

“Yes.”

That surprised everyone.

“What did she ask?”

Rosa hesitated.

“She asked whether household staff were still paid through Alcázar.”

Dario stopped breathing.

Luca looked at him.

“You knew my sister was investigating Alcázar.”

“No.”

“You knew the woman you worked for wanted long-term staff records.”

“I thought she was Belini.”

Belini laughed without humor.

“You thought I cared which nanny worked here ten years ago?”

Dario said nothing.

Emma looked at the payroll rule again.

Something bothered her.

“The deductions started six months ago.”

Marco nodded.

“June fourth.”

“Same night she entered the office.”

“Yes.”

“But the vendor transfers started earlier.”

Marco checked.

Emma was right.

The first vendor transfer hit the reserve account eight months ago.

Two months before the payroll rule.

Luca’s eyes sharpened.

“So Alessandra did not create the account.”

“No.”

Marco pulled the founding records.

The reserve account had been created by Alcázar finance eighteen months earlier.

Authorized by Dario.

Dario went white.

Belini looked at him.

“You lied.”

“I created it for contingency expenses.”

“Whose contingency?”

Dario said nothing.

Luca did not raise his voice.

“Dario.”

The man folded.

“Mr. Moretti’s former chief of staff.”

Marco frowned.

“Which one?”

Dario looked at Luca.

“Matteo Rinaldi.”

Luca’s face hardened.

Rinaldi had served Luca’s father for twenty-seven years.

He had retired after the funeral.

He had also been the man who told Luca that Alessandra’s body was too damaged to view.

Emma understood the implication before anyone said it.

The reserve account existed before Alessandra returned.

The fraud was older than her.

Maybe she had not built it.

Maybe she had found it.

Luca looked at the woman in red frozen on the monitor.

“Why would my sister use my signature to add employee deductions to an existing theft?”

Marco answered first.

“To make the account easier to trace.”

Belini frowned.

“That makes no sense.”

Emma did.

“She made the theft touch people.”

Everyone looked at her.

“If the missing money stayed inside vendor contracts, Luca might never notice.”

She looked at him.

“But if workers started losing hundreds every month…”

Luca finished.

“Someone would complain.”

Emma’s stomach tightened.

Except they had.

And Belini had told them to stay quiet.

Luca looked toward her.

Belini understood at the same time.

Her face lost color.

“She expected complaints to reach me.”

“Yes,” Luca said.

“But they reached you first.”

Belini sat down.

For the first time, arrogance disappeared.

“I buried the signal she created.”

Nobody spoke.

Marco’s screen flashed again.

A new result from the reserve account.

One outbound payment had not gone to Alessandra Holdings.

It had gone to a private medical clinic outside Turin.

Patient name concealed.

Emma looked at Luca.

Marco opened the invoice metadata.

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Eight years of payments.

Beginning three days after Alessandra’s supposed death.