Chapter 6: What Luca Brought With Him
He sat at my kitchen table like a man waiting for a verdict.
I poured two cups of coffee.
Set one in front of him.
Sat across from him with mine.
"How long have you known about Miami?" he asked.
"Since this morning.
How long have you?"
He wrapped both hands around the mug.
"I started to suspect about eight months ago.
An auditor flagged an irregularity in one of the subsidiary accounts.
I asked Marcus to explain it.
He did — convincingly.
I let it go." He looked at the table.
"I should not have let it go."
"No," I said.
"You shouldn't have."
"I trusted him."
"You trusted him over me.
For years."
He looked up.
"Yes."
I gave him a moment with that.
"Why are you here, Luca?"
He reached into his jacket and set a folder on the table.
"Because when I got home last night, I went to that locked drawer.
The one Evelyn mentioned." He opened the folder.
"The letter wasn't the only thing in it."
Inside were documents.
Printed emails.
A photograph.
I picked up the photograph first.
It showed me outside a hotel on Michigan Avenue.
I was laughing.
A man's hand was visible at the edge of the frame, resting on my arm.
I recognized the moment immediately.
"That's my brother," I said.
"Damon.
He was visiting from Atlanta.
We had dinner and he walked me to the hotel where he was staying." I set the photo down.
"I remember that night.
He'd just told me his wife was expecting their first child."
Luca closed his eyes briefly.
"Marcus gave me this and said the man had been seen leaving your room the following morning."
"Damon flew home that night.
His boarding pass would confirm it." I looked at the printed emails.
"What are those?"
"Emails between Marcus and a woman named Carla Voss.
She worked in our legal department at the time.
She left the company five years ago." He slid the pages toward me.
"Read the third one."
I found it.
*He's almost there.
Keep feeding him the doubt and he'll file by spring.
Once the divorce is done and he's off-balance, the Miami window opens.
Make sure the fertility angle stays in play — it keeps him angry at her, not at us.*
I read it twice.
"The fertility angle," I said.
"Marcus was the one who suggested I consider whether the problem was yours." Luca's voice was flat.
Controlled in the way that meant something underneath was not controlled at all.
"He came to me after a board dinner.
Said he'd heard something from a specialist I'd consulted.
Said the results suggested I was fine and that perhaps I should ask harder questions."
"He manufactured doubt."
"Yes."
"He used our grief.
Our most private pain.
And he turned it into a tool."
"Yes."
I stood up.
Walked to the window.
Outside, the street was ordinary.
A woman walking a dog.
A delivery truck double-parked.
The world moving forward the way it always did, indifferent to what happened inside kitchens.
"I want him gone," I said.
"Not just from Moretti Global.
I want him to answer for this."
"So do I." Luca's chair scraped back.
He came to stand beside me, not close, but present.
"Diane Okafor is your attorney?"
I looked at him.
"How do you know Diane?"
"She called my general counsel forty minutes ago." Something moved across his face that might, in another life, have been the beginning of a smile.
"She's thorough."
"She is."
"I want to cooperate fully.
Whatever you need from Moretti Global's records — you'll have it." He paused.
"I also want to meet them.
The children.
When you're ready.
If you're ever ready." He stopped.
"I don't have the right to ask for that.
I know I don't."
I looked at the photograph of my brother still on the table.
"You don't," I said.
"Not yet."
He nodded once.
Picked up his jacket.
"Nia." He stopped at the kitchen door.
"The person who told me you might not be telling me everything about the fertility tests.
I believed him for years.
I want you to know I understand now what that cost you.
What it cost them." His voice dropped.
"I'm sorry."
I didn't answer.
He left.
I stood at the window until the street was quiet again.
Then my phone rang.
It was Diane.
May you like
"Marcus Hale just lawyered up," she said.
"He knows we're looking."
