My Daughter Stopped By The Grand Piano And Said That Song Belonged To Her Late Mother...

The heavy oak doors of my study swallowed the sound of the city outside. Through the leaded glass windows, the glow of downtown traffic cast long, geometric bars across the Persian rug. Lily was fast asleep upstairs in her nursery, tucked beneath a heavy quilt, her breathing soft and even. But sleep was a luxury I couldn't afford. On the mahogany desk before me sat a stack of legal folders, yellowed bank statements, and a thumb drive containing every audio file Elena had ever recorded during our marriage.

The screen of my laptop flickered, casting a blue pallor over the room. I clicked open the folder labeled Unreleased Compositions, the very folder Victoria had spent the last two years trying to scrub from the foundation's servers.

A knock at the door broke the silence. The heavy brass handle turned slowly, and Martha stepped inside. At fifty, with her brown hair pinned into its usual tidy bun and wearing her slate-grey evening cardigan over her blouse, she looked exhausted. Her hands were clasped tightly in front of her, the knuckles white.

"She called," Martha said without preamble, her voice barely above a whisper. She walked over to the wingback chair and sat down, staring at the dead fireplace.

"Victoria?" I asked, not looking up from the screen.

"One of her assistants. Asking if I remembered seeing any loose manuscript paper in the music room tonight after the guests left." Martha looked up, her eyes dark with a quiet, lingering shock. "Dante, I've worked in this house for twelve years. I packed up Mrs. Moretti's things after the accident. There were boxes of handwritten sheets. Victoria told the board they were destroyed in the fire at the lake house."

"They weren't destroyed," I said, my gaze locked on a file date from three days before Elena's car went off the coastal highway. "They were transferred."

"To Victoria's personal account?" Martha asked, leaning forward.

"To a shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands under a dummy LLC," I replied, tapping the trackpad to bring up a corporate registry search. "She didn't just steal the compositions, Martha. She registered them as her own work for the upcoming autumn symphony debut. The piece Lily recognized tonight—*Midnight Waltz in E-Minor*—is the centerpiece of Victoria's new charity album."

Martha let out a sharp breath, shaking her head slowly. "She has no shame. To take a dead woman's life work and slap her own name on the program... Mr. Moretti—Dante—what are you going to do? Victoria has the board in her pocket. She controls the funding for Lily's trust."

"Not all of it," I said, standing up and walking to the wall safe behind the mahogany bookshelf. I spun the dial—three turns left, two right, one left. The heavy steel door swung open with a muted click. Inside sat a single, leather-bound ledger. "Elena foresaw this. Not the specifics, perhaps, but the ambition. She knew what Victoria was capable of the moment the ink dried on our settlement."

I pulled the ledger out and set it on the desk between us. The leather was worn, the edges frayed.