Chương 14
“No. I always decide before anyone sees I don’t.”
Elena studied him.
“Sofia knew that too.”
“She knew everything once it was too late.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Yes.”
The word surprised both of them.
Luca rubbed his thumb over the dark watch on his wrist.
“I’m angry with her,” he said. “She is dead, and I am angry she did not tell me in a way I could hear.”
“She tried.”
“I know.”
“That may be worse.”
“Yes.”
Elena looked down the empty corridor.
“She loved you,” she said. “Not because she misunderstood you. That was the part you never believed. She saw what you were.”
“And left.”
“She was trying to make you choose.”
“She should have known I hate choices.”
“She did.”
Three days passed before Matteo could leave the hospital.
The mansion was no longer available. Police maintained control of parts of the property under warrants related to weapons, financial records, and Sofia’s death. Staff scattered. Some called Luca. Others called lawyers. One sold a photograph of officers carrying boxes through the front doors to a news site.
By the second morning, Luca’s face appeared on television beneath headlines about organized crime, poisoned medication, and the reopened investigation into Sofia Moretti’s death.
Public language flattened everything.
Mafia heir.
Dead socialite.
Sick child.
Mystery maid.
The photograph of Elena came from an old staff charity event. Commenters called her brave, opportunistic, manipulated, and dangerous within the same hour.
Luca arranged for Matteo to recover in a furnished apartment owned by Miriam’s firm under a trust Sofia had created.
It was on the sixth floor of a building in Jersey City.
No gates.
No ballroom.
No staff beyond Caldwell and one rotating nurse.
The elevator smelled of takeout food. A neighbor left a stroller in the hallway despite a printed notice prohibiting it. Pipes clicked behind the walls. The living-room windows faced another building where a man practiced trumpet badly every afternoon.
Matteo loved it.
He stood at the window with both hands against the glass and laughed the first time a delivery bicyclist argued with a taxi driver below.
Luca did not.
He checked locks repeatedly. He watched every passing car. He slept in a chair near Matteo’s room with the pistol on a table until Miriam saw it and told him the weapon could not remain in a property connected to her firm.
He argued.
She refused to argue back.
He surrendered the pistol to Nico, who stored it elsewhere.
The absence under Luca’s jacket felt like missing bone.
Elena did not stay at first.
She visited Matteo every morning, prepared his food, repaired the stuffed lion properly, and left before evening. She had moved into her mother’s apartment in Bloomfield and spent hours dealing with investigators about her father.
On the fourth day, Luca found her washing a cake pan in the narrow kitchen.
“You don’t work for me,” he said.
“I know.”
“You keep cleaning.”
“I used the pan.”
“You also washed three cups.”
“They were in the sink.”
“I would have done it.”
Elena looked around the kitchen. “When?”
He glanced at the dishes.
“That isn’t the point.”
“It might be.”
She dried her hands.
“Matteo asked whether I live here.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
“He’ll ask again.”
“Probably.”
Luca leaned against the counter.
“You could.”
Elena went still.
“For Matteo,” he added.
“That is how people like you make ownership sound generous.”
“I am offering a room.”
“In a hidden apartment controlled by a lawyer while federal agents investigate your family.”
“It has a good view.”
She almost smiled.
Then her expression sobered.
“I can’t live inside another promise to protect your son.”
“He needs you.”
“So do you.”
The statement was not tender.
It was accusation and fact.
Luca looked away.
Elena continued. “That is the problem.”
“What do you want?”
“I want choices that are mine.”
He nodded.
She seemed unsettled by his lack of resistance.
“I can pay you as Matteo’s caregiver,” he said. “A contract through Miriam. Defined hours. You leave when you choose.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“Miriam has.”
“Of course.”
“She said I should stop offering people gratitude when what they need is legal clarity.”
“That sounds like her.”
“Will you consider it?”
Elena folded the dish towel.
“I’ll consider Matteo.”
“That is not the same.”
“No.”
Luca accepted that too.
Rafe contacted him on the fifth night.
The call came through a number known only to three people.
Luca was sitting on the floor of Matteo’s room, trying to build a wooden train track. One curved piece refused to fit. Matteo watched from the bed with open disappointment.
The phone vibrated.
Luca recognized the silence before the voice.
“Your father would not recognize you,” Rafe said.
Luca kept one hand on the train piece.
“You knew about the hospital apartment?”
“I know where my family is.”
“We are not your family.”
Rafe inhaled.
For the first time, age entered his voice.
“I changed your diapers.”
“You told that story at my wedding.”
“You slept on my chest after your mother died.”
“I was two.”
“You think memory begins only when you can describe it?”
Matteo reached for the train piece.
Luca gave it to him.
The boy turned it around and fitted it easily.
Rafe continued. “I kept your father alive. I kept you alive. I built every alliance you inherited and buried every mistake you made.”
“You buried Elena’s father.”
Silence.
Matteo pushed a blue train along the track.
Rafe said, “Paolo Rossi sold information.”
“To whom?”
“You do not need names from fifteen years ago.”
“He had one.”
“That girl poisoned you against me.”
“She gave me a letter.”
“A dead woman gave you permission to become weak.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
He looked at Matteo, who was making quiet engine sounds.
“What was in the medication?” Luca asked.
Rafe did not answer.
“Did you know?”
“I knew Brennan was trying something unapproved.”
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“Did you order it?”
“I ordered him to keep the boy stable.”
