Chapter 10: The Hearing
Claire filed the trust challenge on a Wednesday.
By Thursday morning, Marco's attorney had called Giovanni's phone four times.
Giovanni didn't answer any of them.
By Friday, the settlement draft Marco had promised arrived — and Claire read it in twenty minutes and called me with three words: *He changed the language.*
The employment protections I'd asked for — the five-year commitment, the specific anti-liquidation clause — were gone.
Replaced with a vague statement of intent.
Non-binding.
Worth nothing in a courtroom.
"He was never going to honor it," I said.
"No," Claire said.
"He wasn't."
"Then we proceed with the challenge."
"Already filed," she said.
"The hearing is set for the fourteenth."
The fourteenth was eleven days away.
In those eleven days, I worked my shifts at the hospital, picked Lily up from school, made her dinner, helped her with the worksheet about animals that she took very seriously, and read her two chapters of the book about the mouse who wanted to be a chef.
I also met with Giovanni four times — twice at the Lincoln Park apartment for appearances, once at Claire's office to review the challenge documentation, and once, unexpectedly, at a park near my apartment where we walked for an hour because I needed air and he'd offered to bring coffee.
That last one wasn't for appearances.
I wasn't sure what it was.
The morning of the fourteenth, I wore the same department-store dress I'd worn to Sophia's wedding.
It was the nicest thing I owned.
I didn't think about that until I was already on the train.
Claire met me outside the courthouse.
"Giovanni's inside," she said.
"Marco arrived twenty minutes ago with two attorneys.
Renata is with him."
"Renata came?"
"She came," Claire said.
"I don't know if that's good or bad yet."
We went inside.
The courtroom was smaller than I'd imagined.
Wood paneling.
Fluorescent light.
A judge who looked like she'd heard every version of every story and was waiting to hear which version this one would be.
Marco sat at the opposing table.
Composed.
His two attorneys flanked him.
Renata sat in the gallery behind him, silver-haired, straight-backed, her hands folded in her lap.
Giovanni sat at our table.
He looked at me when I came in and nodded once.
I sat beside him.
The proceedings began.
Claire presented the case methodically.
The date discrepancy.
The witness signature anomaly.
The medical records documenting Aldo's cognitive state.
The timeline of Marco's control over the legal team.
The document Carver had given me — now authenticated by an independent forensic firm — showing that while Aldo had signed it, the instruction memo attached to the original filing bore Marco's assistant's handwriting, not Aldo's.
Marco's lead attorney pushed back on each point.
Competently.
He'd had time to prepare.
Then Claire called her final witness.
I hadn't known about this.
Giovanni hadn't either, from the look on his face.
An elderly man made his way to the stand.
Eighties.
Careful with his steps.
He sat down and adjusted the microphone and looked at the judge with the calm of someone who had decided, at some point, that he had nothing left to lose.
"Mr.
Benedetti," Claire said.
"Can you state your relationship to the late Aldo Fierro?"
"I was his personal attorney for thirty-one years," the man said.
"Until 2019, when Marco Fierro informed me that the family would be transitioning to a new legal team."
"And were you present for any discussions regarding the trust amendment in question?"
"I was not present when it was signed," Benedetti said.
"I was present three weeks before, when Aldo called me at home." He paused.
"He told me he was worried.
He said Marco had been bringing him papers to sign and he wasn't always sure what he was signing.
He asked me if I could come and review things." He stopped again.
"I told him I would come the following week.
He d*ed before I could get there."
The room was very quiet.
"Did Aldo Fierro ever instruct you, in any conversation, to draft or initiate a marriage clause for the family trust?"
"Never," Benedetti said.
"In thirty-one years, he never mentioned it.
The trust was structured to pass to both sons equally.
That was always his intention.
Always."
Marco's attorney stood.
"Objection.
This is hearsay and — "
"It's testimony," the judge said.
"I'll weigh it accordingly.
Sit down."
He sat.
I looked at Marco.
His composure was intact.
But his hands, flat on the table in front of him, had gone very still.
Renata, in the gallery, had not moved.
But something in her face had changed.
She was looking at her younger son with an expression I couldn't fully read — and then she looked at Giovanni, and I could read that one.
It was grief.
Not for what was happening in this courtroom.
For something older than that.
The judge called a recess.
In the hallway, Giovanni stood beside me and said nothing for a long moment.
"You didn't know about Benedetti," I said.
"No," he said.
"Claire found him two weeks ago.
She didn't tell me.
She said she wasn't sure he'd come."
"Why did he?"
Giovanni looked down the hallway to where the old man was being helped to a chair by Claire's assistant.
"He said he owed it to Aldo," Giovanni said quietly.
"He said he'd been carrying it for four years."
I watched Benedetti accept a cup of water.
His hands were steady.
"Some debts take a long time to pay," I said.
Giovanni looked at me.
"Yes," he said.
"They do."
Marco appeared at the end of the hallway.
His attorneys were with him, but he walked ahead of them.
He stopped in front of Giovanni.
"You found the old man," he said.
"Claire found him," Giovanni said.
"It doesn't change the signature."
"It changes the context," Giovanni said.
"Which is what the judge will weigh."
Marco's jaw tightened.
Then he looked at me.
"You should have taken the envelope," he said.
"Probably," I said.
"But then I wouldn't be here."
Something moved behind his eyes.
Not quite respect.
Closer to the recognition one opponent gives another.
"This isn't finished," he said.
"No," Giovanni agreed.
"But it's close."
Marco walked back toward his attorneys.
May you like
The recess ended.
We went back inside.
