The Venetian Barn
Copyright© 2026 by Paul Darkblue
Chapter 3: The Fallout
The next morning, I remained in bed; I simply didn’t have the strength to get up and go to work. Around eleven, a police car pulled into my courtyard, and a couple of officers, an older male and a young, cute female, knocked at my front door.
I pulled on some clothes and opened the door. “Good morning, officers. What can I do for you? Is something wrong? Please, come in.”
They introduced themselves and followed me inside. I noticed them glancing around my living room; the female officer looked stunned by the space. I offered them a coffee, and then the older officer began his questioning.
“Mr Bassetti, do you know Mr Angelo Menti?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, I do. He’s a prominent solicitor, and just last Monday I discovered he’s been having an affair with my wife. Why are you asking me about him?” I saw no reason to hide anything, since they almost certainly already had that information.
“Last night, he was found severely beaten inside his flat,” the older officer said.
The female officer picked up the thread, looking slightly uncomfortable: “In fact, Mr Bassetti, it was your wife who found him. She went to his place after midnight, and when he didn’t answer the door or his phone, she called emergency services. Your wife is alleging that you are behind the assault.”
“Well, officers, I’m sure my wife is furious with me. Last night, I confronted her about her betrayal, asked her to leave our house, and handed her the divorce papers. I suppose that’s why she went straight to Mr Menti’s place.”
I paused briefly before continuing, “However, I had absolutely nothing to do with his assault. I was here the entire night, waiting for my wife to return after she’d spent the afternoon and evening fucking her lover.”
I didn’t mince my words. The young female officer blushed slightly and gave me a look of genuine sympathy.
“She came home around 11 PM and left about an hour later. I video-recorded our entire argument on my phone, and I’m happy to show you the footage if required. I also have CCTV cameras covering the entire perimeter of my property, and I can easily provide the outdoor recordings. When she left, I was totally devastated, as you can imagine. I’ve spent the rest of the night in bed, mourning the death of my marriage. But in my opinion, if you’re investigating a revenge attack on Mr Menti, you ought to question a long line of other wronged husbands and families. My wife isn’t the first married woman he’s taken from her husband, and mine isn’t the first marriage he’s shattered.”
That effectively ended the conversation. They thanked me for my time and left. I never heard from the police again. I imagine they ran a few routine checks on my background, my finances, and my movements, but eventually abandoned that line of inquiry.
When Angelo Menti regained consciousness in hospital a couple of days after the attack, he told police that the men who assaulted him spoke with heavy Eastern European accents. They rang his doorbell minutes after Marzia left at 10:40 PM, claiming an urgent water leak in a nearby flat needed checking. The moment he opened the door, they forced their way inside, bound and gagged him, and immediately set to work. They began beating him, demanding the combination to his home safe. He couldn’t withstand the pressure; he wasn’t a tough man by any stretch, and after a few heavy blows to the face, he gave up the code. They cleared out the safe, taking over 20,000 euros in cash, several luxury watches, laptops, and other high-value items. What they didn’t steal, they smashed to pieces: his 65-inch HD flat screen, expensive vases, and high-end home furnishings. Finally, before leaving, they gave him another brutal beating, breaking as many bones as they could, and took a piss and shit on his sofa and bed. The entire raid took no more than twenty minutes. What Menti didn’t realise was that the men had also been instructed to retrieve a hidden video camera installed in his bedroom two days earlier.
The police linked the raid to a series of home invasions with the same modus operandi across the Veneto region over the preceding months. The suspects were an Albanian gang, but they had already moved on, vanished without a trace, and were never caught.
The months that followed were, without question, the worst of my life.
On the legal front, Marzia, with the full backing of her lover’s powerful law firm, threw everything she had at invalidating the prenup. Unfortunately for her, her stepfather and my family’s solicitors had done an exceptional job; the agreement was ironclad and entirely untouchable.
However, I knew from her intercepted emails that overturning the prenup wasn’t her real goal; it was merely smoke and mirrors designed to create leverage so she could claim the one thing she truly cared about: the house.
Before the judge, my legal team presented the property deeds. The house belonged solely to me and was an integral part of my family’s estate. Every single receipt and invoice for the restoration work was made out in my name, and I had paid every last cent from my personal accounts. It took six months, with the judge weighing every aspect of our marriage, but he eventually ruled entirely in my favour. The house was declared part of my family’s property and protected under the prenup. They appealed the ruling, and, as is typical within the Italian civil justice system, the litigation dragged on for six years before reaching its final conclusion. But the outcome never changed: she would never set foot inside my house again for the rest of her life.
She texted me repeatedly, sending letters and emails begging me to let her have the house. She offered everything I wanted; she would pay double the house’s market value, and I never replied. She tried to force a personal confrontation, but I refused every time. She ambushed me on several occasions outside the house and in public places, alternating between sugarcoating me and calling me names. I simply ignored her. I gave her the absolute silent treatment, never speaking a single word to her. During all of our court hearings and legal meetings, I let my solicitors do all the talking, refusing to respond directly to any question she posed.
She never sued me for her privacy rights, and I never used or even watched the video taken in Angelo Menti’s bedroom. The pictures I had received were more than enough to crush my life; I didn’t need to watch any additional footage. I actually destroyed the pictures and the movie after the legal dispute ended.
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