Chapter 12 - What Loyalty Cost
Daniel wanted to withdraw his statement.
He said it plainly.
“My daughter didn’t do anything.”
Nobody argued.
That made the room worse.
He had spent eighteen years trimming hedges for people who could erase his daughter’s next semester with a phone call.
I understood why he was afraid.
I was afraid too.
Rachel asked him to save the message from the school.
“We’ll handle this one piece at a time.”
Luca arrived an hour later after Daniel agreed to see him.
He came alone.
No driver in the doorway.
No security officer standing over the table.
Daniel didn’t rise.
“My kid isn’t part of this.”
“I know.”
“Then why does your fiancée still control that account?”
“She doesn’t anymore.”
“Bit late.”
“Yes.”
Luca placed a letter on the table confirming that the scholarship would be funded regardless of Daniel’s employment or involvement in any complaint.
Rachel read it before Daniel touched it.
Then she asked Luca to leave us alone.
He did.
I followed him downstairs.
On the sidewalk, he looked at the bakery window instead of me.
“Her father called,” he said.
Isabella’s father, Aldo Rossi, financed several Moretti developments.
“What did he want?”
“For me to say the engagement ended by mutual agreement. For you and Nora to accept settlements.”
“And if you don’t?”
“He withdraws from projects. Calls in what he can. Makes the rest expensive.”
“Can he?”
“Some of it.”
I folded my arms.
“Are you asking me to feel bad for you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He gave a tired, humorless breath.
“I deserved that.”
I watched a delivery driver wheel flour through the bakery door.
Life kept moving around us.
“What are you going to do?”
Luca took a long time to answer.
“For most of my life, I thought loyalty meant protecting people who belonged to me.”
“People don’t belong to you.”
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
“Beginning isn’t enough for Daniel’s daughter.”
“I know.”
That night, Rachel called.
Luca had authorized release of employment records to her clients’ legal representatives and asked his own attorneys to preserve financial communications.
Including messages that could hurt him.
“He also corrected Nora’s termination record,” she said.
I sat down.
“Will it help?”
“It’s a start.”
My phone buzzed before we finished.
A message from Isabella.
May you like
You wanted him to choose.
Come see what he chose to hide.
