Chapter 10 - The Signature
A handwriting expert said the signature might be real.
Isabella stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“Did you sign blank pages? Electronic pads? Documents you didn’t read?”
Her face changed.
Grant had brought papers to her in bed that night.
“You said they were insurance forms,” she whispered when police later questioned him.
Grant smiled across the interview-room table.
“I don’t remember that.”
The signature was hers.
The statement was not.
Evelyn’s phone records placed her at the house the same evening.
A pharmacy record showed she bought an over-the-counter sleep aid that afternoon.
Circumstantial, but ugly.
Prosecutors added fraud-related inquiries to the growing investigation.
Grant’s attorneys responded by attacking Isabella publicly.
Anonymous stories appeared online.
MOB PRINCESS IN CUSTODY WAR.
BELLANDI DAUGHTER’S “BREAKDOWN” EXPOSED.
Photos showed Isabella crying outside court.
Another showed Massimo speaking to Dante beneath a restaurant awning.
Grant’s strategy was obvious.
Make the Bellandis look dangerous enough that every fact became questionable.
Massimo’s public-relations team offered to fight back.
He refused to publish Isabella’s medical records or private messages.
“No,” he said. “We don’t prove she deserves dignity by stripping away more of it.”
Isabella heard him from the doorway.
Her expression softened for the first time in days.
Then Noah’s supervised visit arrived.
Grant met him at a family center under the eye of a social worker.
Massimo waited outside with Isabella.
Twenty minutes later, the social worker called for security.
Evelyn had appeared claiming Grant’s attorney authorized her presence.
While staff argued at the front desk, a fire alarm sounded.
Everyone evacuated.
Outside, Noah was gone.
So was Grant.
Isabella screamed his name across the parking lot.
Massimo grabbed her before she ran into traffic.
Torres was already on the phone.
“Amber Alert. Now.”
Massimo’s old life roared inside him.
Every violent shortcut he had ever known returned at once.
Dante pulled up beside the curb.
“Tell me where to start.”
Massimo looked at his daughter collapsing in his arms.
Then at the police cars flooding the street.
He made the hardest decision of his life.
“Start by giving Detective Torres every contact, warehouse, driver, and safe property we ever had.”
Dante stared.
“All of them?”
May you like
“All.”
To save Noah, Massimo was about to open the doors he had spent twenty years keeping closed.
