Chapter 10 - The Trip That Never Existed
The itinerary looked authentic.
Private flight.
Hotel.
Business meetings in London and Zurich.
Ten days away.
Vittorio’s assistant had never created it.
His companies had no meetings scheduled there.
The itinerary had been manufactured.
Marcus had planned to insert it into Vittorio’s calendar once the final arrangements were complete.
Investigators reconstructed the next stage from deleted emails and draft documents.
Bianca intended to persuade Vittorio that the overseas trip had been discussed weeks earlier and simply forgotten during an exhausting period.
It sounded absurd until Vittorio realized how carefully they had prepared.
For months Bianca had told people he was overworked.
Marcus collected photographs of him exhausted.
The scheduling leak gave them knowledge of every legitimate commitment.
The private file documented every forgotten appointment.
If Vittorio challenged the fake trip, his confusion itself could be used as evidence.
During his absence, Bianca planned another household crisis.
The exact details were never fully written down.
But references to emergency evaluation appeared repeatedly.
So did references to Lucy.
Vittorio could not prove exactly what they intended to stage.
He no longer needed to.
They had already crossed enough lines.
Police executed search warrants for Marcus’s apartment and a storage unit registered through one of his companies.
Inside the unit were backup drives, printed financial records, copies of Romano schedules and photographs taken inside the mansion.
There was also a sealed box containing discarded household documents Bianca had apparently supplied.
Nothing supernatural.
Nothing cinematic.
Just patient theft.
Small pieces gathered over months.
The box demonstrated something more frightening than a sudden crime.
Planning.
Bianca had not snapped one morning and thrown dog food at Lucy.
Her cruelty existed inside a larger pattern of control.
And the confrontation in the breakfast room had destroyed that pattern in less than fifteen seconds.
But Bianca still believed she had leverage.
Through her attorney, she produced photographs of Vittorio hitting Marcus and Bianca.
She intended to portray him as violent.
Vittorio had already given police the same footage.
Including the moments before the blows.
The difference was that he had submitted the complete recording.
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Bianca submitted cropped still images.
Investigators noticed immediately.
