Chapter 16 - Sofia Moretti
Sofia Moretti had been living under another name for six years.
At my mother's oncology residence.
She was not a patient.
She was part of the nonprofit board that funded the facility.
Carlo had sent her away after discovering Salvatore's network.
She kept duplicate records and waited for a moment when exposing them would not simply get them destroyed.
Mom had recognized her from an old photograph weeks earlier.
She told nobody.
"I wanted to be sure," Mom said later.
Mara called federal agents.
Celeste called private security.
Evelyn called the residence administrator and locked down internal access.
Bianca grabbed my shoulders.
"Breathe."
The men outside never got through the second security door.
Federal agents arrived first.
Sofia came to the phone.
Her voice was calm.
"Liya, your mother is safe."
"Who were they?"
"Men who thought I still had the originals here."
"Do you?"
"No."
"Where are they?"
She paused.
"With Adrian."
I stared at the phone.
"What?"
Sofia had mailed the final archive to Adrian's office three days earlier.
He had never received it.
Someone inside Moretti Holdings had intercepted the package.
Marco called from the road.
They had lost Salvatore's vehicle.
But security logs showed one person had entered Adrian's office after the package arrived.
Marco's deputy, Daniel Voss.
Daniel's phone was off.
His apartment was empty.
Then a traffic camera found his car heading north.
Toward Boston.
Toward the law office named in Carlo's video.
Adrian turned around.
He called me from the highway.
"I'm going after him."
"With police?"
"They know."
"Adrian."
Silence.
I heard the thing he was not saying.
His father had died chasing these records.
He wanted this personally.
"Don't become your uncle trying to defeat him," I said.
A long pause.
Then Adrian answered, "I won't."
Two hours later, Massachusetts State Police stopped Daniel Voss outside Worcester.
The archive was in his trunk.
So was $400,000 cash.
And a passport issued under another name.
May you like
But the most important thing they found was a voicemail Salvatore had left him.
"Bring me Carlo's archive," Salvatore said. "Then we finish what started on the highway six years ago.
