Chapter 2 - The Mafia Boss Followed His Security Chief's False Alibi—But When a Loyal Driver Died in the Lake, He Knew the Little Girl Was in Danger
Antonio began his inquiry with records outside Daniel's control.
He traveled through the region in a borrowed vehicle, checking municipal traffic footage, toll stations, a family-operated fuel stop near Saronno, and a private garage in Milan.
The initial evidence supported Daniel's claimed journey.
His black sedan had left the estate at 7:12 p.m.
It passed a southern toll point 43 minutes later, appeared on a camera near Milan, and entered the private garage at 9:36.
At 2:17 a.m., the same vehicle departed.
It returned through Como shortly before 3:00.
The times were consistent with the explanation Daniel had given.
But Antonio had been instructed to establish where Daniel was, not merely where his car traveled.
At the fuel station, he obtained footage from an older side camera covering the vending machines and washrooms.
At 8:51 p.m., Daniel's sedan entered the forecourt.
Marco Bellini, Daniel's driver of 6 years, got out.
He bought coffee, smoked part of a cigarette, checked his phone, and returned to the driver's seat.
The camera had a clear view of the front passenger door.
Nobody emerged.
Footage from the Milan garage showed Marco arriving alone and leaving alone.
Daniel's car had completed the trip.
There was no independent evidence that Daniel had accompanied it.
Antonio continued checking the route.
A delivery van camera recorded the sedan leaving the estate. Approximately 1 minute earlier, a dark motorcycle without a visible registration plate departed through a service gate generally used by maintenance staff.
The rider wore a full-face helmet and disappeared from municipal camera coverage less than 2 kilometers later.
Antonio could not identify the rider.
But the footage suggested a possible explanation for the false alibi.
Someone had made sure Daniel's vehicle was visible along the route while allowing its owner to travel separately.
That afternoon, Antonio brought the photographs to Lorenzo.
They agreed that the motorcycle could not yet be connected conclusively to Daniel.
Instead of immediately confronting him, Lorenzo summoned Marco Bellini for what appeared to be an ordinary conversation.
Marco arrived approximately 40 minutes later.
He was a broad man in his early 40s who habitually twisted his wedding ring when uncomfortable.
Lorenzo offered him grappa and casually asked about Milan.
Marco discussed traffic near Monza, parking difficulties, and a restaurant where he initially suggested they had eaten.
He quickly corrected himself.
Daniel had supposedly gone ahead.
When Lorenzo asked where Daniel had gone, Marco said he had gone to the meeting.
Lorenzo continued asking apparently harmless questions.
Marco described the restaurant and remarked that Daniel disliked its fish.
The comment did not fit easily with his explanation that Daniel had gone ahead separately.
Lorenzo gave him an opportunity to dismiss the inconsistency as confusion caused by long hours of driving.
Marco accepted it gratefully.
When asked where he met Daniel for the return journey, Marco said Daniel appeared on foot outside the garage after 2:00.
He did not know where Daniel had come from.
Lorenzo ended the conversation without making an accusation.
After Marco left, Antonio observed that the driver had lied.
Lorenzo believed Marco had initially revealed part of the truth before trying to protect Daniel.
Less than 7 hours later, Marco was dead.
At 5:14 the following morning, Antonio called Lorenzo.
Marco's car had passed through a barrier on the old lakeside road near Nesso and entered the water.
Police initially attributed the crash to excessive speed.
There were no skid marks and no reported witnesses.
The crash had occurred at approximately 1:00 a.m.
Marco had driven that road many times, including in difficult conditions.
Lorenzo doubted that he had simply misjudged the curve, although the circumstances did not yet prove murder.
Antonio pointed out that Daniel could have learned about Marco's meeting with Lorenzo through the estate's gate records.
The death changed Lorenzo's approach.
He ordered that nobody else be brought into the estate for questioning unless arrangements were made to protect them afterward.
Then he turned his attention to Elena.
That morning, she was publicly dismissed.
The senior housekeeper, Signora Bianchi, delivered the decision in front of 2 kitchen workers known to pass information to Daniel.
Elena received 1 week's wages and was told she might be contacted about irregularities in her employment record.
She left the property carrying a small suitcase while Sophie held her hand.
Lorenzo did not speak to her.
Antonio had arranged accommodation for mother and daughter at a pension outside Como, with 2 trusted men positioned separately to watch the building.
The dismissal was intended to create a misleading impression.
If Daniel believed Lorenzo suspected Elena of wrongdoing, he might treat her as a convenient scapegoat rather than an immediate threat.
The plan was risky.
Elena and Sophie remained vulnerable.
Before lunch, Daniel provided what appeared to be damaging evidence against Elena.
He entered Lorenzo's office carrying a folder.
Inside were telephone records showing calls from Elena to a florist in Verona, reportedly linked through shell companies to a Barone relative.
There was also a surveillance photograph of a woman in a green scarf handing a paper bag to a suspected Barone courier.
A bank account under Elena's name had received €9,000 approximately 3 weeks before she started working at the estate.
Daniel recommended quietly detaining her.
Lorenzo refused.
He said she should be watched instead.
After Daniel departed, Lorenzo photographed the documents and sent them to Antonio.
The independent checks quickly revealed serious problems.
The bank account had been opened 8 months earlier.
However, the identification number used in the account record was not issued until 6 months earlier, following a residency correction.
The account appeared to have been established using a number that did not exist at the alleged opening date.
The surveillance photograph also contained a contradiction.
Its metadata placed the image on a Wednesday afternoon when Elena had been working at the estate.
Antonio verified her presence through an independent bakery delivery.
At 4:15 p.m., Elena had argued with the driver about 2 rejected trays of bread.
The driver's invoice bore her signature.
His dashboard camera showed her at the estate's rear delivery entrance at 4:17.
The market shown in Daniel's photograph was more than 20 kilometers away.
The evidence against Elena was not merely uncertain.
Parts of it were demonstrably inconsistent with independent records.
Antonio concluded that someone wanted Lorenzo to investigate Elena's alleged Barone connections instead of asking why Daniel had appeared near her home.
The morning after Marco's death, Lorenzo went to the lakeside road before the police removed the final barriers. The broken railing hung above dark water. A strip of yellow tape fluttered in the wind. He could hear traffic far away and the slow slap of waves against stone. Marco had driven him through those curves hundreds of times. The man had a wife, Lucia, and a son who had just started secondary school. Lorenzo had once attended the boy's birthday party. He remembered Marco standing beside a crooked cake, proud of the ordinary life he had built despite the risks of his work.
Antonio approached with a folder under his arm. "The vehicle's brake lines are being examined," he said. "The investigators won't give us a conclusion yet."
"Don't pressure them. Let them work."
Antonio gave him a long look. In the old days, Lorenzo might have demanded answers and punished someone before the evidence existed. "I'll make sure Lucia has legal support," Antonio said.
"And money for her son's education. No conditions attached. If she doesn't want anything from us, we leave her alone."
Lorenzo stared at the water. He had spent years believing that his father's murder required him to become harder than the man who had raised him. Now he was beginning to see how easily hardness became blindness. He had allowed Daniel to decide who was loyal and who was expendable. He had allowed fear to substitute for verification. If Marco had died because of the questions Lorenzo asked, the cost of that mistake would be paid by a family that had done nothing wrong.
Later he met Elena at the pension where Antonio had placed her and Sophie. It was a modest building above a bakery, with narrow stairs and a view of a church tower. Sophie was drawing on the windowsill while Elena folded the few clothes she had packed. The child had accepted the move with a seriousness that troubled Lorenzo.
"Are we fired forever?" Sophie asked when she saw him.
"No. Your mother is helping me understand something important."
"Then why did Signora Bianchi say she was bad at her job?"
Elena's eyes flashed. "She didn't mean it, sweetheart."
Lorenzo crouched to the child's height. "Sometimes grown-ups pretend things for reasons that are complicated. But it wasn't fair for you to hear that. I'm sorry."
Sophie considered his apology. "Can Mommy still make the little lemon cakes?"
"When she's ready."
The answer seemed to satisfy her. She returned to her drawing. Elena followed Lorenzo into the small hall and lowered her voice. "You cannot keep moving us around without telling me what's happening. Sophie has already asked if we're running from someone."
"You deserve to know," he said. "A man who worked for me died after I questioned him about Daniel. I don't know whether the death was deliberate. Someone has also created false records suggesting you are involved with the Barone family."
Elena went very still. "The Barones? I've never met anyone by that name."
"I believe you. But whoever manufactured those records may try again."
"Why me?"
"I don't know yet. That's the question I'm trying to answer."
She crossed her arms. "Sophie saw Daniel. She didn't invent him."
"I know she believes what she saw. I also know we need evidence strong enough that he cannot dismiss her as a confused child."
"And what happens when you get it?"
Lorenzo had no comforting answer. "Then we make sure you can live somewhere safe, whether you stay employed by me or not."
Elena looked surprised by the last part. "You would let us leave?"
"Of course."
"Men like you don't always mean that."
He accepted the criticism. "Then judge me by what I do."
From the next room came Sophie's voice: "Mommy, I drew the window!" The picture showed a small house, a yellow square of light, and a tall figure standing outside. In one hand the figure held something silver. Above the man's shoulder Sophie had drawn a curved line.
"What's this?" Antonio asked, pointing to the curve.
"The bird on his jacket," Sophie said. "It looked like a bird with one wing."
Elena shook her head. "Daniel doesn't wear a bird on his jacket."
"Maybe it was someone else," Sophie said, suddenly uncertain.
"Maybe," Lorenzo agreed. "You did the right thing telling us."
He took a photograph of the drawing only after asking Sophie and Elena for permission. Later, Antonio compared it with the insignia used by several private security contractors in the region. One company, Orione Protective Services, used a stylized silver falcon. It had been dissolved eight years earlier. Its final registered director had been a man named Renato Ferretti, who had served as an intermediary between the Morettis and the Barones before Vittorio's death.
The connection was suggestive, not conclusive. Daniel might have worn a borrowed jacket; the child might have remembered the shape incorrectly. Still, it gave Antonio a lead outside the estate's controlled records.
That night Antonio visited the retired seamstress who had embroidered uniforms for Orione. She remembered Daniel, not as an employee but as a customer who had brought in a jacket with a damaged falcon patch. He had asked her to remove the company name while leaving the bird. She could not remember the exact year, but she still had an old order book. Antonio photographed the entry, then arranged for her to speak with a lawyer before anyone else contacted her.
When he called Lorenzo, his voice was grave. "The order is dated four months after your father died. Daniel paid in cash."
Lorenzo stood in his study, the house silent around him. "That doesn't prove he killed Vittorio."
"No. But it proves he had contact with a company connected to people we were told he never dealt with."
"Find Renato Ferretti. Quietly."
"There's another problem," Antonio said. "Someone accessed the estate's archived camera logs from the night Sophie saw the visitor. The request was made after you dismissed Elena."
"Who requested them?"
"Daniel's administrator account."
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Lorenzo looked toward the security camera in the corner of his office. He had allowed that lens to watch him for years. He crossed the room, unplugged it, and returned to the phone.
"If Daniel thinks the child saw enough to hurt him," he said, "the pension won't be safe for long. Bring them back through the west road. And Antonio—this time, no one outside the three of us knows where they're going."
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