Chapter 7: Testa
"How long has he been on the feed?" Lorenzo said.
"Forty seconds.
He came over the east wall." Marco was already speaking into his radio.
"He knows the camera positions.
He's staying in the gaps."
"Then someone gave him the layout."
"Yes."
Lorenzo looked at the screen.
The figure moved with purpose.
Not panicked.
Not hesitant.
This was someone who had done this before.
"How many men do we have on the guest wing exterior?"
"Two.
But they're positioned at the main entrance, not the garden side." Marco spoke into the radio again.
"Redirecting now."
"How long until they reach him?"
"Three minutes."
"He'll be at the window in two."
Lorenzo turned and ran.
He took the back corridor that cut through the kitchen and came out through the service exit into the east garden.
The night air was cold.
The garden lights were off — Marco had killed them remotely to slow the intruder's visibility.
Lorenzo moved along the hedge line.
He could hear footsteps ahead.
Soft.
Careful.
Then they stopped.
Lorenzo stopped too.
Silence.
Then a voice, low and close.
"I know you're there."
Lorenzo stepped out from the hedge.
The man called Testa was perhaps fifty, compact, with a face that had been broken and reset more than once.
He was standing ten feet from the guest wing wall, and he was not holding a w*apon.
His hands were visible.
That was either professional restraint or a trap.
"The woman and the child," Testa said.
"I was told to bring them somewhere quiet until the matter inside was resolved."
"The matter inside is resolved," Lorenzo said.
"Walk away."
Testa looked at him.
"My employer—"
"Your employer is going to be arrested before sunrise." Lorenzo kept his voice level.
"Whatever he promised you, he can't deliver.
Whatever he's paying you, it ends tonight."
Testa was quiet for a moment.
"You're Lorenzo Moretti."
"Yes."
"Aldo said you'd be d*ad by now."
"Aldo was wrong about several things."
Marco's men appeared at the garden entrance.
Two of them.
Testa heard them and didn't turn around.
"I was told this was a clean job," Testa said.
"No one gets hurt.
The woman and the child stay comfortable until a phone call is made." He looked at Lorenzo steadily.
"I don't hurt children."
"Then you made a poor choice of employer."
"I'm beginning to see that."
"Put your hands on your head," Marco said from behind him.
Testa did.
He went without resistance.
As Marco's men walked him toward the estate's security room, he said one more thing over his shoulder.
"Aldo has a second team.
Not here.
Somewhere else.
Insurance, he called it." He paused.
"I don't know where."
Then he was gone.
Lorenzo stood in the dark garden for a moment.
A second team.
He went back inside.
Ferretti arrived at eleven forty-three.
He came with two colleagues and a quiet efficiency that Lorenzo had always respected.
He set up in the library, spread the documents across the reading table, and worked through them without theatrics.
Valentina spoke for ninety minutes.
She answered every question.
Her voice shook twice.
She did not cry.
Dante sat in the corner and answered when asked.
He did not try to minimize what he had done.
At one in the morning, Ferretti looked up from the documents.
"Aldo Moretti," he said.
"Is he aware that this evening has not gone according to plan?"
"He has a second team somewhere," Lorenzo said.
"Insurance."
"Then we move before he activates it." Ferretti closed his folder.
"I'll need authorization to execute a warrant in Rome tonight."
"You'll have it."
Ferretti looked at him.
"Lorenzo.
This is your uncle."
"I know what he is."
Ferretti nodded slowly.
"All right." He stood.
"We'll need Sophia Bellini's formal statement as well.
Tomorrow morning, when she's rested."
"She'll give it."
Ferretti gathered his papers.
"One more thing." He paused at the door.
"The man on the mountain road.
Caruso.
His family has been waiting three months for an answer." He looked at Lorenzo.
"When this is done, they deserve to know what happened."
"They will," Lorenzo said.
Ferretti left.
The library was quiet.
Marco sat down in the chair across from Lorenzo.
"Rome team is moving in forty minutes," Marco said.
"They'll have Aldo before three."
Lorenzo looked at the reading table.
At the scattered documents.
At the photograph of Dante and Aldo at a restaurant four years ago.
"The second team," he said.
"Aldo's insurance."
"We're working it."
"Work faster."
Marco's phone buzzed.
He looked at it.
His expression shifted.
"They found the second team," he said.
"They weren't a team.
It was one person." He looked up.
"A lawyer.
Aldo's lawyer.
He had instructions to file an emergency injunction at first light.
Freeze all Moretti assets pending a contested will claim." Marco set the phone down.
"If the injunction had gone through before we moved, everything would have been tied up in courts for years."
Lorenzo looked at him.
"Aldo planned for me to survive," he said slowly.
"The mountain road was the first option.
But if I survived, the injunction was the second.
Either way, he ends up with control."
"Yes."
"He never needed me d*ad.
He just needed me unable to act."
"The marriage settlement and the property transfer were the fastest route.
But if that failed—"
"The courts were the backup." Lorenzo leaned back.
"He's been running two plans simultaneously for four years."
Marco nodded.
"Ferretti's team will reach the lawyer tonight as well," he said.
"The injunction won't be filed."
Lorenzo stood.
"I'm going to check on Sophia and Lena."
Marco looked at him.
Said nothing.
Lorenzo walked upstairs.
He knocked on the guest room door.
Sophia answered quickly.
She hadn't slept.
"Is it over?" she said.
"Most of it."
She looked at him.
"Come in," she said.
May you like
"I made tea.
I didn't know what else to do with myself."
