Chapter 27 - The Visitor from the Past
Twenty minutes later, the private conference room adjacent to the penthouse was bathed in the cold, gray morning light filtering through the high glass windows.
Seated at the mahogany table was a man in his late sixties, wearing a slightly rumpled trench coat and rimless glasses. It was Dr. Marcus Weber, the former chief archivist of the Vienna Conservatory—a man who had spent forty years cataloging musical scores before retiring into quiet obscurity.
Dante stood near the door, his arms crossed over his chest, his presence an immovable wall of absolute protection. Elena sat directly across from Marcus, her posture straight and composed.
"You didn't have to fly across the Atlantic, Dr. Weber," Elena said quietly. "If you wanted to send records, secure couriers exist."
"Couriers don't talk, Elena, and what I brought cannot simply be filed away in an envelope," Marcus said, his voice trembling slightly as he opened a weathered leather briefcase. He pulled out a thick stack of yellowed, fragile parchment papers bound with faded red ribbon. "When your father passed away, and your uncle Victor took over the conservatory administration, certain financial ledgers were quietly buried. For years, I kept silent because I thought I had no choice."
He slid the top document across the table.
Elena looked down. Her breath caught in her throat.
It was a legally binding contract signed by her father, dated over a decade ago—not an agreement of sale, but a forced surrender of her father's foundational compositions and early artistic copyrights, orchestrated by Victor Moretti and Heinrich Voss to bankrupt her family’s independent publishing house and force them into corporate dependency.
"Your uncle didn't just blacklist you because you refused to play their corporate game, Elena," Marcus whispered, looking her directly in the eyes. "He buried your father's true legacy because he knew that if your independent works were ever published, the conservatory’s entire endowment would legally revert back to your family trust."
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Dante walked slowly over to the table, leaning down to inspect the legal signatures. His dark eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "In short," Dante said coldly, "Victor Moretti didn't just steal a conservatory. He committed grand corporate fraud and robbed Elena of her intellectual property."
Elena slowly raised her hand, her fingers gently touching the faded ink signature of her father. All the pain, the exile, and the quiet years of hiding behind a secretary's desk crystallized into a sudden, blinding clarity. She wasn't just a survivor of their system. She was its rightful heir.
