His Collateral

Chapter 11

***Half of this chapter is going to be a flashback explaining everything leading down to the marriage of Alessandro and Bella.***

Alessandro's POV:
(6 months earlier)
"What do you mean by dead end?" I asked feeling my anger rise. Marco, my best friend and PI, was seating in front of me in my office.

"It's a dead end Sandro! Ferrera is clean, there is no concrete evidence tracing him back to murder of you brother."

"Then you aren't looking hard enough!" My fists connected with the hard table.
"Vincenzo was murdered and I have reason to believe that Aldo, is the culprit."

"You can't be so sure about that Sandro. Your brother knew lots of people that could have been out for his life." He replied

"Not like Ferrera. He had the motive and means don't you understand? My brothers last words were Aldo Ferrera. He was trying to tell us something, something that you clearly can't figure out."

"Okay then. Let's assume Aldo is indeed the culprit-"

"He IS the culprit." I interrupted

"Okay Aldo is the culprit but we can't put him behind bars with this." Marco said flipping through the documents scattered across the table.
"We would need solid proof, one that Aldo can't possibly deny."

"So what on earth do I pay you for? I'm keeping my own end of the bargain. I'm staying away from the bastard but I'll tell you this, if I don't get any lead on this case soon, I'll confront Ferrera myself."

"That won't be a good idea. You would only make him aware of the fact that we are suspecting him and he could erase any form of evidence left."

I slammed my fist into the table once more standing up. He was right. The last thing we wanted Aldo getting suspicious.

"I'll continue the investigation. And I'll be sure to keep in touch in case of anything new." He said and walked out of the office.

I looked down at the papers on my desk. Nothing seemed to add up. Aldo was indeed a clever man. He was careful enough to cover up his tracks but not for long.

I sat back down, my hands massaging my temples as I thought about how things came to this. After Vincenzo died, the plan was to permanently shut down his loan shark business. But at that time my company was facing possible bankruptcy so when I saw the accounts of his business I decided to keep it running, at least until I could make good money to run my business.
In the long run, I became blinded with greed. My company was now back on its feet but I couldn't seem to get enough of the money coming from the loan shark business and so I continued even though I knew it was illegal.

But everything changed the day I received a phone call informing me that the brakes on Vincenzo's car didn't just fail but they were tampered with. I was quick to hire a private investigator, Marco, to look into the case and every turn pointed to one suspect, Aldo Patriozo Ferrera.

Those were Vincenzo's last words but then, it didn't make any sense to me, seeing as I had no idea who the man was. After going through the accounts we discovered that Aldo was owing quite a huge sum and had been evading payment for months. So what we're the odds that he was the very last person in contact with Vincenzo before his supposed accident, what were the odds that he was the very man whose name left the lips of a dying man and not to forget that he still hadn't paid the money he owed in it's entirety.
The way I saw it, Aldo believed removing Vincenzo from the picture would ensure he was debt free. Marco was right. I wouldn't win a murder case against Aldo with petty documents and statements from loan shark employees.

Few weeks later...
I was fed up of waiting for proof we knew we were never going to get our hands on. Aldo was a smart man. Catching him wasn't going to be easy so I decided to deal with him in my own way. After all one of the ways to get to a man was through his family. We were able to discover that he was married with two children but that was just about it, nothing less, nothing more. I had no idea what his family members looked like. He probably knew he had enemies and didn't want to put them in the line of fire. But that didn't stop me and I went ahead with my plan and met with Aldo.

Marco was in my office some weeks after and he wasn't happy with the idea. I sat in my office with him, looking at more documents with regards to Aldo's debt.
"I believe I told you not to confront Ferrera about your brother, Alessandro?" He asked

"And I didn't. He has no idea that we are suspicious of him."

"Then what's all this I'm hearing about a wedding?" He asked again

"I simply asked for my money and since he couldn't pay back I asked for his daughter as a collateral." I explained

"And he agreed?"

"Ferrera is a selfish bastard. He would do anything to save his own butt even if it meant selling his daughter."

"So what's the plan?"

"We'll get to Ferrera through his daughter. He'll have to break, he doesn't have a choice."
Flash back over.