Chapter 20
“What happens now?” Raffaele asked.
“I’ve hired an independent forensic accounting firm.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Independent?”
“No Valente connections.”
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“And the outstanding families?”
“We contact them.”
“All of them?”
“All.”
“Some may go public.”
“I know.”
“It could damage the foundation.”
“I know.”
“Our businesses.”
“Maybe.”
He studied me.
“You would accept that?”
I thought about Clara lying in the hospital.
About my father’s letter.
About my mother’s photograph.
About Serena walking away without asking me for one more thing.
“I’ve spent most of my life believing protecting something meant controlling what people knew about it.”
I looked at the ledger between us.
“I’m beginning to think Dad learned the opposite before I did.”
Raffaele nodded slowly.
“And me?”
“What about you?”
“What are you going to do to me?”
There was an old assumption inside the question.
Consequences in our family had always arrived through power.
I was tired of power being our only language.
“You’ll tell the accountants everything.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you don’t.”
He seemed surprised.
I continued.
“But I won’t lie for you. I won’t hide records. I won’t stop anyone from asking questions.”
Raffaele looked down.
“Antonio would enjoy this.”
“What?”
“You finally refusing to behave like me.”
I almost smiled.
“I thought he spent his life worried I’d become you.”
“He did.”
That time, we both laughed.
Quietly.
Sadly.
Like two men who finally understood a family joke twenty years too late.
Chapter 4: The cost of becoming honest
Clara remained in the hospital for another twelve days.
Recovery gave us something neither of us had managed to create during the previous year.
Time.
Real time.
Not dinners interrupted by calls.
Not fifteen minutes before one of us left for an event.
Not conversations held while I answered emails.
Time where I sat in a chair and listened.
The first difficult conversation happened on the fourth day after she woke.
She was eating soup.
I was pretending hospital coffee qualified as coffee.
“Serena came here,” Clara said.
My hand stopped halfway toward the cup.
“When?”
“The first night I was conscious enough to remember.”
I looked at her.
“What did she say?”
“She apologized.”
I stared.
“For what?”
Clara raised an eyebrow.
I almost laughed.
“Right.”
“She was very upset.”
“I didn’t ask her to come.”
“I know.”
“She left.”
Clara’s spoon stopped.
“I don’t mean the hospital.”
I forced myself not to hide behind vague language.