Chapter 12 - The Witness in Idaho
Samuel Grant lived in a pale blue house outside Boise beneath a different name.
At least he had until eighteen months earlier.
Adrien, Isabella, and Dante arrived to find an empty property and a neighbor who remembered an elderly man called Henry Walsh.
“Quiet guy,” the neighbor said. “Fed birds. Fixed radios. Never had visitors.”
“When did he leave?” Isabella asked.
“One day he was there. Next day, gone.”
“Did police come?”
“No.”
“Family?”
“Never saw any.”
The neighbor hesitated.
“There was a woman.”
Adrien leaned forward.
“What woman?”
“Maybe fifty. Dark hair. Fancy rental car. She came twice that last week.”
“Name?”
“No idea.”
Security footage from a gas station three blocks away provided the answer.
The woman was Evelyn Bellini.
Stefano’s younger sister.
Isabella stared at the grainy image.
“Why would Bellini send his sister?”
Dante crossed his arms.
“Maybe Grant trusted her.”
Adrien remembered something Lorenzo once said.
The most dangerous alliances are the ones nobody knows exist.
They searched property records.
Samuel Grant had purchased a cabin in Montana nine years earlier through a corporation.
That corporation was still paying taxes.
They flew north.
The cabin stood at the edge of a frozen lake surrounded by pine forest.
No lights.
No vehicles.
Adrien approached cautiously.
Before he reached the porch, a voice called from the trees.
“Lorenzo’s son?”
Adrien stopped.
An elderly man stepped from behind a wood shed holding a hunting rifle.
Samuel Grant.
He was thinner than the file photographs.
Older.
But alive.
Adrien raised both hands.
“I’m Adrien Moretti.”
“I know.”
Grant looked at Isabella.
“And you’re the lawyer’s daughter.”
“How do you know me?”
“Your father saved my life.”
That changed the tone instantly.
Grant lowered the rifle.
Inside, the cabin smelled of coffee and firewood.
Grant refused recording devices.
He checked their phones.
Then he sat across from Adrien.
“Your father should have burned Chicago down.”
Adrien gave a humorless smile.
“He usually preferred that solution.”
“Not at the end.”
Grant looked toward the window.
“Lorenzo changed after you married Isabella.”
Adrien glanced at his wife.
“He started talking about grandchildren. Retirement. Legitimate businesses. Things men like him pretend they don’t want until age catches them.”
Grant explained he had managed offshore accounts for Bellini in the early 2000s.
Not criminal profits directly.
Political money.
Bribes.
Payments disguised as consulting retainers.
Bellini controlled people by making them financially dependent.
Lorenzo discovered it.
“He confronted Stefano,” Grant said.
“When?”
“Thirteen years ago.”
“One year before my father died.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Bellini laughed.”
Grant’s eyes darkened.
“He told Lorenzo nobody could expose him without destroying themselves too.”
Because Bellini had deliberately routed transactions through companies owned by every major family.
If Lorenzo revealed the accounts, the government would investigate everyone.
Including the Morettis.
“So my father stayed quiet,” Adrien said.
“At first.”
Grant shook his head.
“Then he found another way.”
Lorenzo began separating legitimate Moretti assets from criminal enterprises.
He documented Bellini’s personal crimes.
He built the hidden vault.
And he contacted federal prosecutors indirectly.
“He was preparing to cooperate?” Isabella asked.
Grant nodded.
Adrien felt something inside him crack.
Everything he believed about Lorenzo had always contained contradictions.
A brutal man protecting family.
A criminal building legitimate businesses.
A father teaching violence while secretly preparing an exit.
“Then Bellini found out,” Adrien said.
Grant’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Someone inside Lorenzo’s security team.”
Adrien thought of Marcus.
Grant shook his head before Adrien could speak.
“Not Marcus.”
“Who?”
“I never knew.”
“Was Lorenzo poisoned?”
Grant took a long breath.
“The doctors said pancreatic cancer.”
“I know.”
“The cancer was real.”
Adrien waited.
“But six weeks before he died, his condition suddenly accelerated.”
Grant opened a cabinet and removed an envelope.
Inside was a medical report.
A toxicology screen.
Unusual concentrations of a medication capable of worsening bleeding complications.
“Who ordered this test?”
“Your father.”
Adrien looked up.
“He knew?”
“He suspected.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he believed if you learned Bellini was involved, you would start a war.”
Adrien laughed bitterly.
Everyone had apparently understood him except himself.
Isabella took the report.
“Can this prove murder?”
“No.”
Grant shook his head.
“But I know who supplied the medication.”
“Who?”
Grant looked directly at Adrien.
“Dr. Vincent Marchetti.”
Adrien recognized the name.
The family physician who treated Lorenzo during his final year.
The physician who still treated Eleanor.
Adrien stood so fast his chair fell backward.
Isabella was already reaching for her phone.
Eleanor was home.
And that morning, before they left Chicago, Dr. Marchetti had scheduled a routine visit.
Adrien called his mother.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Dante called estate security.
His expression changed.
“Boss.”
Adrien turned.
“The doctor arrived thirty minutes ago.”
Adrien felt the world narrow.
“Lock the house.”
Dante was already issuing orders.
Samuel Grant watched him.
“Bellini doesn’t repeat mistakes, Adrien.”
Adrien grabbed his coat.
“No.”
His voice became terrifyingly calm.
“But sometimes old men forget that sons learn from fathers.”
They ran for the door.
May you like
This time Adrien was not racing toward a war.
He was racing toward his mother.
