Betrayed at the Altar, I Married a Powerful Rival novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Two Years

The doctor put four stitches over my eyebrow in the Orsini kitchen, and Federico held the lamp.

When it was done, he walked me up to his grandfather's room and stopped at the door.

"Ten minutes," he said. "I'll be outside."

"He asked for me alone."

"He asked for you."

The old man lay propped on three pillows with the curtains drawn.

He looked at the stitches first, and then he looked at my hands.

"They're ruining you," he said.

"They're trying."

"Sit."

I sat in the chair by the bed.

"Your father was my engineer," the old man said. "Nineteen years. He drew every dock the Orsinis built from Bridgeport to Stamford. You didn't know that."

"I knew he drew docks. I thought he worked for the city."

"He worked for me."

The old man's breath rattled, and he waited for it to pass.

"Sixteen years ago he told me he had something to say about the Ruggeri warehouses. He was killed the following week."

"A car accident."

"That's what the police wrote."

I stared at him.

"I couldn't prove otherwise. I've been trying ever since." He turned his head on the pillow. "Ask me nothing else tonight. I'm tired, and I don't have the evidence. But I've watched for his daughter a long time, and I'll tell you where to start. Ask my grandson what he's been keeping in the grey folder in his desk."

"What folder?"

"Ask him."

He closed his eyes.

I went out into the hall, and Federico was standing there, and I walked past him without a word.

His study was empty.

The desk was a big walnut one, and the grey folder was in the second drawer, under a box of cartridges.

It wasn't locked.

I opened it on the blotter.

The top page was a photograph of me at twenty-six, on the Sabatini porch, carrying a drafting tube.

Under it were pages of typed reports, each dated, each with a column on the left for time and place.

Subject leaves Sabatini residence 7:40. Subject at the port office until 6.

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