Chapter 5 - THE MAN SHE PLANNED TO MARRY
Luca returned to New York under police protection.
Emma watched him enter the courthouse in the navy coat she had given him for Christmas. He did not look kidnapped. He looked exhausted—and he refused to meet her eyes.
Under oath, Luca said Emma had become obsessed with the Moretti family after learning about the employee trust. He claimed she accepted his proposal to gain access to company records and persuaded him to transfer eight million dollars.
His story contained enough truth to be dangerous. Emma had asked about her father. She had entered the office using Luca’s code. They had discussed the trust. Every innocent conversation had been rearranged into a conspiracy.
Emma’s attorney asked why Luca had fled.
“I was afraid of her,” he said.
The judge temporarily froze the trust conversion and ordered Emma to surrender her passport.
Outside, Vincent waited beside a black car.
“You beat Derek,” he said. “You cannot beat a man who knows where every truth is buried.”
Emma noticed a purple mark beneath Luca’s collar. She also noticed him tapping two fingers against his thigh—the signal he had used during their relationship whenever Vincent was listening.
Luca had lied under pressure.
But pressure did not erase betrayal. He had sacrificed her freedom to protect something he feared losing more.
That evening, Emma reviewed the affidavit line by line. One sentence described a conversation in their apartment at 11:40 p.m. on March 6. Luca claimed Emma planned the theft while standing beside the kitchen window.
At 11:40 p.m., their building had been evacuated because of a gas leak. News footage showed both of them outside across the street.
The false detail gave prosecutors grounds to question Luca privately. He lasted twenty-three minutes.
Vincent had detained him in a Moretti hotel suite and threatened his mother. Derek forced him to sign the affidavit and record the airport footage. The eight million dollars had never left New York.
Luca agreed to wear a wire.
Before he could meet Vincent, police found him unconscious in his apartment beside an empty bottle of prescription pills.
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On the table was a note in his handwriting:
Emma made me do it.
