A Wealthy Tycoon Rushed Home to Save His Mother From His Scheming Wife… But His Future Fiancée Exploited His Rage to Make Off With Everything
“Did Vivien hurt you?”
Her hand trembled above the keyboard. Vivien grabbed her wrist. “She is confused from the stroke.”
Naomi pulled Vivien’s hand away, but this time Luca stepped between them. “Do not touch my mother again.”
“You believe an employee over the woman you are marrying?”
“I believe my mother.”
Naomi picked up the papers and handed them to Luca. The first page declared Isabella medically incapable. The third appointed Vivien as temporary guardian. The fifth authorized Isabella’s removal to a private neurological facility outside Illinois. The last transferred control of three valuable waterfront properties to a company called Crown Meridian Care. Beneath Luca’s name was an electronic signature.
“I never signed this,” he said.
Vivien rose slowly. “The facility’s attorneys prepared the forms because your mother needs professional care. Naomi has kept her here because she wants access to the family.”
“Which facility?” Luca asked.
Vivien hesitated. Naomi turned the pages toward him. “There is no address. No physician’s name. No license number.”
She lifted Isabella’s ink-covered thumb. The print on the final page was smeared sideways, the ridge marks stretched toward the margin. “She was pulling away when this was taken.”
Vivien pointed to Naomi’s sleeve. “The fabric beneath Isabella’s nails proves she fought Naomi.”
“You dragged her hand across me.”
“That is absurd.”
Luca looked at Marco. “Close the gates. No one leaves this floor until we know what happened.”
The family physician, Dr. Samuel Grant, arrived minutes later and examined Isabella where she sat. When he lifted the cardigan sleeve, a line of dark bruises circled her forearm. Older marks had begun to yellow beneath them.
“This did not start today,” Naomi said.
Luca looked toward Vivien with a terrible slowness. She stepped back. “Isabella falls. She fights the nurses. Ask anyone.”
“I help her bathe,” Naomi replied. “Those bruises were not there three days ago. She also began shaking whenever you entered the room.”
“She shakes constantly.”
Dr. Grant shone a light into Isabella’s pupils, checked her pulse, then looked troubled. “She has been heavily sedated.”
“She takes no sedatives,” Luca said.
“Something similar to a strong anti-anxiety medication is in her system. I need bloodwork to identify it.”
Vivien turned on Naomi. “She controls the medicine cart.”
“Her prescriptions arrive in sealed morning packets,” Naomi said. “I document every dose.”
Marco opened the medicine cabinet. The seals appeared intact, but the packet labeled for that morning had one empty space where a tablet had been removed and another inserted. On the medication chart, Naomi’s signature appeared beside the dose in elegant black ink.
“I didn’t write that.”
Vivien let out a breath that sounded almost like relief. “Bruises, medicine, a forged document on the floor beside her. How much evidence do you need, Luca?”
Naomi held the chart beneath the piano lamp. The ink gleamed wetly. “This was signed within the last hour.”
Marco checked the piano’s automatic recording system. Isabella used it to preserve therapy exercises and the melodies she could still play. “The latest file was deleted forty-eight seconds before we entered,” he said. “The system shows Luca’s administrator code.”
Luca stared at the blank display. Only he and Marco had ever known that code, but Marco was already moving through security logs with practiced confidence, and Luca’s fear for his mother made suspicion feel like a luxury he could not yet afford.
Isabella began tapping the piano’s side. Naomi placed a pencil in her left hand and held a sheet of music beneath it. With enormous effort, Isabella formed three uneven letters.
V A U.
Her hand collapsed.
“Vault,” Luca said.
Isabella pressed one low note. Yes.
At that moment an alarm sounded from beneath the mansion. Marco raised his radio, called the guards assigned to the lower level, and received no answer. Vivien looked toward the corridor and ran.
“She’s heading to the private elevator,” Naomi said. “She isn’t trying to escape. She’s going to the vault.”
Luca wanted to follow, but his mother caught his sleeve. He turned back. “What does she want?”
Isabella struck two low notes, paused, then one high. It was an old family abbreviation. Two yeses and a no meant the black seal, the Moretti trust’s official stamp. Without it, major property transfers could not be registered. Vivien already had Isabella’s fingerprint and Luca’s forged signature. The seal would complete the theft.
Luca lifted his mother into her wheelchair and ordered two guards to remain with her. Naomi followed him and Marco downstairs. At the elevator, they found a security officer unconscious beside a half-empty cup of coffee. Dr. Grant, who had come behind them, checked the man’s breathing.
“Same symptoms,” he said. “Whoever drugged Isabella may have tested the dose on him.”
