Chương 6
She was careful now.
Too careful.
Before, Ellie had filled pages with random colors.
Animals.
People.
Houses with impossible numbers of windows.
Now she drew slowly, checking every line before continuing.
“What are you making?” Luciano asked.
She looked up.
“A new family picture.”
His chest tightened.
“Can I see?”
She turned the paper around.
The drawing had three people again.
But something was different.
The figure that represented Celina was missing.
Luciano sat across from her.
“Where is Celina?”
Ellie shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you want to draw her?”
Another pause.
“I don’t know.”
The answer hurt more than anger would have.
Because anger meant there was still something to fight for.
Confusion meant a child was trying to protect herself from being hurt again.
Luciano reached across the table.
“Ellie.”
She looked at him.
“Adults sometimes make choices that hurt people.”
She listened.
“That does not mean the person who gets hurt caused it.”
She looked down.
“Did I do something wrong because I liked her?”
The question was so unexpected that he needed a moment.
“No.”
“But if she leaves because of me…”
“She is not leaving because of you.”
Ellie picked at a small piece of paper stuck to her finger.
“People always leave.”
Luciano went still.
The sentence was not about Celina.
It was older than that.
He remembered the funeral.
The questions.
The years afterward when Ellie would ask whether people stayed forever.
He had answered yes too many times.
Because he wanted it to be true.
“Not everyone,” he said.
She looked at him.
“I am still here.”
For once, she did not question the answer.
Later that morning, Luciano met with his attorney, Rebecca Hale, at a private office downtown.
Rebecca had handled the trust after Ellie’s mother died.
She was careful, direct, and impossible to intimidate.
She placed the original documents on the table.
“I reviewed the records after Marianne called me,” Rebecca said.
“Did anyone request access?”
She opened her laptop.
“Yes.”
Luciano leaned forward.
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“Who?”
Rebecca turned the screen.
“Celina.”
He looked at the record.
“She requested information about the trust structure.”
“Was that illegal?”
“No.”
Rebecca folded her hands.
“Curiosity is not illegal.”
“But?”
“But she requested additional information about transfer authority.”
Luciano stared at her.
“Why?”
“That is the question.”
Rebecca clicked another file.
“She also requested information about whether a spouse could manage certain assets connected to a minor beneficiary.”
The room became quiet.
“She was researching it,” Luciano said.
“Yes.”
“Before the wedding.”
“Yes.”
He leaned back.
The anger was there again.
But underneath it was something else.
Disappointment.
He had spent months planning a future with someone who had been planning around him.
“Can she access anything?”
“No.”
“Because of the trust?”
“Because you built it correctly.”
Luciano looked at the documents.
He remembered signing them years earlier while sitting in a hospital conference room.
He remembered being exhausted.
He remembered wanting only one thing.
To make sure Ellie would always have something that belonged only to her.
Rebecca closed the folder.
“There is one more thing.”
Luciano looked up.
“What?”
“Daniel Voss contacted my office two weeks ago.”
His expression changed.
“About the trust?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“He asked whether the trust had any protection against changes made during marriage.”
Luciano slowly looked toward the window.
The city moved below them.
Cars passed.
People walked into coffee shops.
Someone laughed on the sidewalk.
Normal life continued.
But inside the office, a different reality was forming.
Someone had not just tried to remove Ellie.
Someone had been studying the exact walls built to protect her.
And Luciano finally understood the real question.
It was never about where his daughter would go.
It was about what someone believed would happen after she was gone.
It was about what someone believed would happen after she was gone.
Luciano left Rebecca’s office with a copy of every document she had shown him and a feeling he hated more than anger.
Uncertainty.
Anger was simple.
Anger had direction.
Uncertainty forced him to consider possibilities he did not want to accept.
He drove back to the estate instead of returning to his office.
For years, he had believed work was the one place where problems made sense.
Numbers either matched or they did not.
Contracts either held up or they did not.
People were more complicated.
When he arrived home, he found Ellie sitting on the floor of the living room with her school backpack beside her.
She had arranged her stuffed animals in a line.
The rabbit with one button eye sat in the middle.
Luciano stood near the doorway.
“What are they doing?”
Ellie looked up.
“Having a meeting.”
He almost smiled.
“About what?”
She picked up the rabbit.
“About whether they should trust people again.”
The answer caught him off guard.
“Did they decide?”
Ellie looked at the stuffed animals.
“Not yet.”
Luciano sat down on the floor beside her.
The expensive suit he was still wearing from the previous night felt ridiculous.
He had spent the morning in offices discussing legal protection and financial risk.
Now he was sitting beside a child’s toys trying to understand a much more important question.
“How do you know when someone is trustworthy?” he asked.
Ellie thought for a moment.
“When they do what they say.”
The simplicity of it hurt.
Adults spent years creating explanations for things children understood immediately.
His phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
A message from his security director.
We found something unusual in the house records.
Luciano looked at Ellie.
“I need to take a call.”
She nodded.
He walked into the hallway.
“What did you find?”
The security director, Marcus, spoke quietly.
“Someone accessed the estate’s internal visitor records.”
“When?”
“Over the last three months.”
Luciano leaned against the wall.
“Who?”
“That is the problem.”
Marcus paused.
“The access was authorized.”
“By me?”
“No.”
Luciano closed his eyes.
“Then who?”
May you like
“Celina.”
The answer should not have surprised him anymore.
