Chapter 2 - No More Graves
I expected revenge to feel like certainty, but standing beside the closed coffin, all I felt was cold.
Dominic's collapse had made him suspicious, not convicted, and the difference became the first difficult promise I made to my daughter.
Gabriel escorted him to an adjoining sitting room while I asked our guests to leave the chapel in peace.
Several men who had worked for me offered to settle the matter before sunset, using phrases that would have sounded comforting to the man I once was.
I ordered them to put their weapons away and remain outside the investigation, and none of them dared ask twice.
The funeral director had frozen near the entrance with a white carnation in his hand, waiting to learn whether the burial would proceed.
"It will," I said, "because Isabella deserves dignity before any of us receives answers."
The priest resumed his prayer, his voice unsteady but kind, while rain struck the stained glass above my daughter's photograph.
Onyx lay beside the raised platform, not moving from his chosen position until I rested a hand on his massive head.
He had been Isabella's dog first, a five-year-old Cane Corso she raised from a puppy who could barely climb the back steps.
She had named him Onyx because his black coat glittered in sunlight, and she had taught him to sit for the smallest children at our community center.
The idea that he recognized a murderer was tempting, but animals remember fear, movement, and painful experiences rather than courtroom facts.
Something about Dominic had frightened him, and that was a question worth examining, not an answer worth pretending I possessed.
As the attendants carried Isabella's closed coffin toward the family mausoleum, I thought about her last ordinary morning.
She had stolen half my breakfast, complained that my coffee tasted like engine oil, and told me to approve a new youth clinic grant.
I had promised to review the paperwork after a meeting, then left the table before she could finish explaining why it mattered.
She had called after me, laughing that I could negotiate a city block but somehow never find twenty minutes for her.
Those twenty minutes were the first thing I wanted back and the one thing no fortune could buy.
At the graveside I stood beneath a black umbrella and watched white roses descend with the coffin into the stone chamber.
I did not ask the priest for forgiveness, only for enough restraint not to create another family mourning someone tomorrow.
Gabriel met me afterward by the chapel steps, with Detective Naomi Reyes waiting beside an unmarked police car.
She was a serious woman in her forties whose direct gaze had never softened simply because I carried the Moretti name.
"Mr. Moretti, your security chief says you have material relevant to your daughter's death," she said.
"I have a man who lied and video that puts his SUV near the scene," I answered, careful to separate the two facts.
Reyes requested the original recording, its acquisition details, and a statement describing the confession without embellishment.
Gabriel supplied the delivery driver's contact information, the dashcam memory-card packaging, and the exact time he had received it.
I repeated Dominic's words to her, including his claim of an accident and his assertion that Isabella saw something forbidden.
I also admitted that I had shoved him against a wall and struck him once, an ugly fact no one could make disappear.
Reyes studied me for a long moment and said my honesty would matter more if it continued when the evidence became inconvenient.
I told her I expected the investigation to hurt, and she said truth usually did when people had worked hard to bury it.
Dominic was still inside the estate, guarded but not locked in a cell, and Reyes insisted that her officers take responsibility for his questioning.
I agreed, because a private army at a funeral was the last thing my daughter would have wanted defending her memory.
At home that evening, the dining room seemed impossibly large with only one place set at the table.
Isabella's place remained untouched, down to the pale-blue napkin she had folded into a crooked flower three nights earlier.
I walked into her bedroom and found sneakers beneath the dresser, textbooks open on a chair, and a list titled Things Dad Must Stop Avoiding.
The first item was a clinic funding meeting, the second a public apology for a canceled concert, and the third simply said listening.
I sat on the edge of the bed until the room grew dark enough that the handwriting became impossible to read.
Onyx climbed onto the rug, rested his enormous head against my knee, and gave one exhausted sigh.
"You miss her too," I whispered, and his slow breathing was the only answer the room offered.
Gabriel returned with a preliminary account of the delivery van, its commercial camera, and the route it had taken the night Isabella died.
The driver, a man named Thomas Keene, had saved the footage automatically because a collision farther down the roadway triggered his device.
A repair shop had copied the card without overwriting the original, which meant investigators could compare the files against their source.
We examined only the still frames Reyes permitted us to see, noticing no obvious plate number on the second vehicle.
Yet there was a brief reflection on a highway barrier that suggested it had been following the same route as Dominic's SUV.
I refused Gabriel's suggestion to search the man's apartment ourselves, ordering that any evidence go through lawful channels.
The command surprised him, and I realized how thoroughly my own habits had taught people to expect intimidation before patience.
At ten o'clock, Reyes called to say Dominic had requested an attorney and had refused to answer further questions.
She had not arrested him yet, and she warned me that a suspicious confession could be ambiguous without supporting evidence.
I asked her whether a reopened investigation could also examine the original crash report and the missing traffic cameras.
She said it already was, and mentioned an unexplained eleven-minute gap between Isabella's last phone call and the recorded crash.
My daughter had called me that night, but I had silenced the phone while meeting men I would no longer name as friends.
The missed call was still in my history, marked by a time that now felt burned into my eyes.
I replayed her final voicemail, a short request to talk when I got home, and heard tension beneath her attempt to sound cheerful.
"It's about the foundation, Dad," she said, "and I need you to trust me more than the people who tell you everything is fine."
That single sentence transformed our grief into a question about the money I had given her to help strangers.
When Gabriel asked whether I wanted the foundation's financial records, I said yes, and told him to invite an independent auditor rather than one of my own accountants.
May you like
Outside the windows, New York lights trembled in the rain while Onyx watched the empty driveway as though expecting Isabella to come home.
I did not tell him she never would, because I was still learning how to tell myself.
