Chapter 14 - The Family Business
They found Vittoria at a private airfield before sunrise.
She was not running through the rain.
She was sitting in a warm lounge, drinking coffee.
That detail stayed with me.
While I watched doors, she ordered breakfast.
Reyes told me the arrest was quiet.
Vittoria asked to call her lawyer.
Then she asked who had talked.
Not whether Lorenzo was alive.
Not whether anyone else had been hurt.
Who had talked.
Marco talked next.
His courage lasted until he realized Vittoria’s lawyers were not coming for him.
He gave investigators the route she had planned, the messages she had deleted from one phone but not another, and the name of the man sent to the hospital.
I didn’t mistake any of it for remorse.
He wanted a smaller cage.
Three days later, Lorenzo asked to see me.
I went alone.
He looked older.
The bandage above his eyebrow had finally been removed.
The skin beneath it was pale.
“Reyes says they found her,” he said.
“Yes.”
He nodded once.
On the bedside table sat Emma’s rabbit, cleaned as much as it could be.
One ear still carried a faint brown stain.
“The nurse did that,” he said. “I didn’t know whether to replace it.”
“You can’t replace something because it reminds you of what happened.”
He looked at me.
“I’m learning that.”
I picked up Rabbit.
Lorenzo touched a folder beside his bed.
“I’ve given them access to the accounts I control. Names. Records. Everything I can document.”
“What happens to the workers?”
“I asked for the legitimate operations to be reviewed separately. I don’t know what can be saved.”
That answer sounded like a man who had stopped pretending to control every ending.
“What happens to you?”
He looked toward the officer outside.
“I answer for my part.”
I held Rabbit against my chest.
“Emma keeps asking if we caught your heart.”
His eyes filled.
“What do you tell her?”
“That doctors helped.”
He nodded.
“She should know that.”
There was a knock.
His attorney entered carrying a thick packet.
Lorenzo glanced at the first page and signed where she pointed.
No speech.
No performance.
Just a pen moving over paper.
I turned to leave.
“Nora.”
I stopped.
“I can’t ask you to forgive me.”
“No.”
“But I can tell the truth.”
“Then do that.”
Months later, I stood outside a courtroom wearing the only dark suit I owned.
Reyes waited beside the door.
Inside, Vittoria sat perfectly straight.
Her eyes found mine.
May you like
She smiled.
Then the prosecutor called my name.
