Chapter 3 - THE LETTER DEREK OPENED
The packet did not say:
YOU ARE A MORETTI.
It was more careful.
RE: SEALED BENEFICIARY VERIFICATION.
Please contact First Commonwealth Fiduciary regarding an unresolved beneficiary designation connected to the Estate of Carlo M. Moretti.
My name.
Lena Sofia Morelli.
My birth date.
My mother’s full name.
Derek signed for it.
Then hid it.
Why?
His phone might know.
Police seized it after arrest.
Search warrant took time.
We did not automatically get everything.
Leah filed preservation notices.
My own apartment belongings were retrieved by police escort.
Derek’s clothes remained.
My things:
Two suitcases.
Laptop.
Documents.
Mother’s jewelry box.
Restaurant shoes.
No mystery papers.
Then I found something missing.
A blue folder.
“What was in it?” Maya asked.
“Nothing important.”
“Define nothing.”
“My mother’s death certificate. Birth certificate. Some tax records. Her old lease.”
“Your birth certificate?”
“Yes.”
Gone.
Detective Cole added it to the search.
Derek’s lawyer argued I might have misplaced it.
True possibility.
Then Carmen called.
“Lena, did Derek ever come to the restaurant without you?”
“Once or twice.”
“More.”
“What?”
“Our bartender remembers him meeting a man in the back booth three times.”
“Who?”
“No name.”
Security cameras went back ninety days.
One visit remained.
Derek sat with a gray-haired man.
No audio.
The man handed him documents.
Derek took photographs with his phone.
Vincent recognized the man when Detective Cole showed him a still.
“Harold Price.”
“Who is he?”
“Former accountant for Moretti Family Holdings.”
“Former why?”
Vincent looked at Leah.
She answered:
“Dismissed for unauthorized access to family beneficiary records.”
My stomach dropped.
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
One month before First Commonwealth’s letter.
Coincidence?
Probably not.
Harold Price had disappeared from regular employment.
Police located him in another state.
His attorney contacted investigators voluntarily after learning of Derek’s arrest.
He denied helping Derek abuse me.
He admitted selling information.
“What information?” I asked Leah.
“He claims Derek asked whether a Lena Morelli appeared in Moretti estate records.”
“Why would Derek ask?”
“Price says Derek already had your mother’s photograph.”
The photograph from my jewelry box?
Maybe.
Derek had gone through my things before.
I thought jealousy.
He wanted to know about old boyfriends.
Maybe he found Sofia and Carlo.
Then searched.
Why?
Money.
It had to be.
That thought made me feel disgusting.
As if being secretly connected to wealth explained why I had been beaten.
Maya corrected me.
“Derek chose violence before he had proof of anything.”
She was right.
Our first abusive incident had been eighteen months earlier.
Before Price.
Money did not create the abuser.
It might have sharpened his reasons to keep me.
That distinction mattered.
The search of Derek’s laptop produced folder names but not contents yet:
MORETTI.
LENA.
BENEFICIARY RELEASE.
POWER OF ATTORNEY.
And one:
AFTER MARRIAGE.
We were not married.
Derek had proposed six months ago.
I said no.
He broke a lamp.
Then apologized.
I had called that passion.
Now I wondered whether my refusal had damaged more than his ego.
Leah showed me one last record.
A marriage-license application.
Started online.
My information entered.
His.
Never submitted.
Attachment:
Prenuptial Beneficiary Waiver.
I had never seen it.
May you like
Derek had been preparing papers for a marriage I had not agreed to.
And one of them apparently required me to sign away something I still did not know I owned.
