Chapter 6 - Sofia's Room
Damon did not explain Sofia in the foyer.
He took Delaney to a locked room on the second floor.
Frank came with them.
Teresa stayed downstairs with her physician, unaware that her dead daughter's name had been spoken again after years of silence.
Damon unlocked the door himself.
The room beyond had not been changed much.
A bed made with a pale gray quilt.
Bookshelves.
A violin case.
Photographs turned face down.
Delaney entered slowly.
"This was hers?"
Damon nodded.
"Sofia was five years younger than me."
"How did she die?"
"Car accident."
The answer came too quickly.
Delaney looked at him.
"You don't believe that anymore."
Damon walked to the window.
"She died six years ago after telling me someone was manipulating my mother's medication."
Delaney's chest tightened.
"Vincent?"
"She never gave me a name."
"What happened?"
"She called me from the road. Said she had copies of prescriptions and a recording. Ten minutes later her car went through a guardrail."
Delaney sat on the edge of a chair.
"Was it investigated?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"Weather. Speed. No mechanical failure."
"You accepted that?"
"I accepted the report."
His voice carried self-disgust.
Frank spoke quietly.
"You were twenty-nine and taking over after your father's stroke."
Damon ignored him.
"I should have pushed harder."
Delaney understood that kind of sentence.
She had spent two years thinking she should have found a better doctor for her mother, insisted on another scan, discovered the cancer earlier.
Guilt was arrogant that way.
It assumed the past had always offered clear choices.
"You didn't kill her."
Damon's jaw tightened.
"I didn't save her."
Delaney moved closer.
"Those aren't the same sentence."
He looked at her.
For a moment, all the stories about Damon Bianchi disappeared.
He was simply a brother standing inside a room nobody had touched because changing it felt like betrayal.
Frank opened a cabinet.
"Sofia kept copies."
Damon turned.
"What?"
Frank removed a small archival box.
"I found it after she died. Your father told me to leave it alone."
Damon's expression hardened.
"You knew?"
"I knew she suspected something. I did not know what the box contained."
"You never opened it?"
"Your father ordered me not to."
"And you listened."
Frank met his gaze.
"I regret that."
The admission changed the room.
Damon took the box.
Inside were handwritten notes, pharmacy printouts, photographs of pill bottles, and a flash drive.
No dramatic confession.
No signed murder order.
Just dates.
Medication names.
Doctor appointments.
Several references to "V."
Delaney sat beside Damon while Frank brought a laptop.
The flash drive held audio.
Sofia's voice.
Clear.
Fast.
Angry.
"I checked Mom's prescriptions again. The dose changes aren't from Dr. Moretti. Somebody is sending corrected instructions through a private account. Frank says Vincent visited the pharmacy twice this month. Damon thinks I'm being paranoid. If he listens to this later, tell him I said I was right."
The recording ended.
Damon did not move.
Delaney wanted to say something.
Nothing would be enough.
So she stayed silent.
The next file was a photograph of a document.
A draft family voting agreement.
Teresa's signature line was blank.
Vincent would receive proxy control if Teresa were found medically incapable of managing her holdings.
Delaney read it twice.
"So this didn't start now."
"No," Damon said.
Frank's face looked older.
"Sofia knew."
Damon stood abruptly.
"We take this to counsel. And the doctor. Everything."
Delaney looked at the flash drive.
"What about police?"
Damon's eyes shifted toward her.
The question mattered because men like Damon were rumored to solve problems privately.
She held his gaze.
"If someone killed your sister and is drugging your mother, you don't need revenge. You need evidence people can't bury."
Frank looked down.
Damon's expression became unreadable.
Then he nodded.
"Police."
It was not weakness.
It sounded harder for him than violence would have been.
That night, investigators were contacted through the family's attorney.
Documents were copied.
Medication samples were preserved.
Sofia's recordings were logged.
For the first time, Damon chose a path Vincent could not dismiss as family conflict.
Delaney left the room last.
Before she closed the door, she turned one photograph face up.
Sofia at twenty-three.
Dark hair.
Bright smile.
One hand around Damon's neck while he pretended to look annoyed.
Delaney closed the door.
Downstairs, Teresa was awake.
She looked at Delaney.
"You found her room."
It was not a question.
Delaney sat beside her.
"Yes."
Teresa's eyes filled.
"Nobody goes there."
"Maybe they should."
Teresa looked toward the stairs.
"Sofia thought I was being poisoned."
Delaney's breath stopped.
"You remember?"
"Some days."
"Did you believe her?"
Teresa's face folded with pain.
"I told her she worried too much."
Delaney took her hand.
"I told my mother she worried too much about every cough."
Teresa looked at her.
"What happened?"
"It was cancer."
Silence.
"Do you forgive yourself?"
"No."
"Then don't tell me to forgive myself."
Delaney smiled sadly.
"Fair."
Teresa squeezed her hand.
"Maybe we start smaller."
"How?"
"Believe the people who are still here."
That night, Damon found Delaney in the front hall preparing to leave.
"My mother told me what you said."
"I say a lot."
"She slept."
"Good."
He looked tired.
"Vincent is gone."
"Missing?"
"His house is empty."
Delaney's stomach tightened.
"That's bad."
"Yes."
"Where would he go?"
Damon shook his head.
Frank approached from the security office.
"We found something."
He held a printout.
Vincent's phone had last connected near Mercy General Hospital.
Delaney felt cold.
"Why there?"
No one answered.
Then she remembered the collections call.
The photographs of her mother.
The offer to erase her debt.
"Because of me."
Damon's expression changed.
"No."
"He knows the hospital matters to me."
"That doesn't mean—"
"He knew enough to send a photo."
Frank looked at Damon.
"Mercy General contracts collections through North Cross Recovery."
Damon's eyes narrowed.
"Who owns it?"
Frank handed him the page.
A shell company.
That shell company traced back to a holding group partly controlled by Vincent Bianchi.
Delaney stared at the number on the page.
May you like
Her mother's debt had not merely been discovered.
It had been sitting inside Vincent's financial network for years.
