Betrayed at the Altar, I Married a Powerful Rival novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: What The Old Man Knew

I waited until the guards had walked Dario out and Paola had gone up to bed.

Then I carried the notebook into Federico's study and shut the door behind us both.

He was standing at the window with his back to me.

"You read that page over my shoulder," I said, "and your face didn't move."

"No."

"Because you already knew."

He turned around.

"Eleven weeks ago I found a mechanic's statement," he said. "Typed sixteen years ago. It says a Lincoln registered to the Sabatini shop hit a gray Buick on the shore road."

"And you put it in your safe."

"Yes."

"The night before the hearing, I asked you if there was anything else."

"I said no."

"You said no, Federico, with my hand on your wrist."

He didn't look away.

"I thought I could have a clear head or the truth in you before that hearing, not both," he said. "I chose wrong."

"For eleven weeks I ate at that woman's table," I said. "I let her hold my hands. I thanked her for the casserole, and you knew what was in her pocket the whole time."

"I knew."

"That is what I couldn't forgive. Not that you watched me for two years, or the folder. You let me go on being grateful to her."

His jaw worked.

"I will take you to my grandfather," he said. "He should hear this from you."

The old man was awake, with the oxygen tube under his nose and the lamp turned low.

I put the notebook on the blanket in front of him.

He didn't open it.

"I told you I couldn't prove it," he said. "That was true. I have known for sixteen years who did it, Gianna. All I ever had was one typed page from a dead mechanic, and the Commission does not move on that."

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