Chapter 19 - THE SON WHO SIGNED
Emilio looked at the signature and immediately shook his head.
"I never signed that."
Giovanni wanted to believe him.
After everything, belief was no longer enough.
Investigators compared the digital certificate to Emilio's devices.
The authorization came from his laptop while he was studying abroad.
Emilio remembered leaving the laptop with a family accountant during a tax audit.
That accountant was dead.
Or so the family believed.
Luca checked the island photographs and found the same accountant standing behind Sebastian Vale under another name.
Vale had been using dead identities for years.
Emilio had been framed to make Giovanni doubt his own son if the archive was ever opened.
The realization finally broke something in Giovanni.
Vale's greatest weapon had never been money.
It was suspicion.
Giovanni took Emilio's face between his hands.
"I should have asked before I hit you at the funeral."
Emilio's eyes filled but he nodded.
"You were hurting."
"Pain is not permission."
It was the apology Giovanni should have made much earlier.
Police traced the accountant's alias to a private airfield north of the city.
Vale was preparing to leave the country.
Giovanni refused to chase him alone.
This time he went with the police and told his children to stay behind.
At the airfield, Vale surrendered only after Luca blocked the runway with an armored SUV.
As officers cuffed him, Vale looked at Giovanni and smiled.
"You think Elena won?"
Giovanni said nothing.
Vale leaned closer.
"Ask Marco why he never came home."
Emilio handed investigators every password he remembered and asked them to search his entire digital history rather than defend his reputation.
Giovanni saw a courage in that choice that he had failed to show at the funeral.
He had demanded obedience when he should have demanded facts.
That realization became the first part of his apology.
May you like
Giovanni turned.
Because Marco was standing behind the police line.
