Chapter 2
Diane did not lower the envelope. The wind pulled at her coat, and she let it.
“Tony,” Vincent said without turning. “Put Luca in the car.”
Tony stepped forward, then stopped when Diane said, “Please. One minute.”
“You brought a lawyer’s envelope to a diner.”
“I brought it because you won’t let me in your house.”
Vincent looked at her—the set of her jaw, the tremor she was trying to hide in her hands.
He had known Diane for eleven years.
She had been at the hospital before he was.
She had held Luca in the waiting room while Vincent signed papers he could not remember signing.
She had stood beside him at the funeral and not spoken a word.
“One minute,” he said.
Tony took Luca to the car.
The boy walked without resistance, but at the door he turned his head and looked back at the woman in the dark coat.
Diane raised her hand. Luca did not raise his.
When the door closed, Diane said, “He doesn’t remember me.”
“He was four.”
“He used to call me Gigi.” Her voice caught, then steadied. “I have photographs, Vincent.
From a private investigator.
The gate, the guard, the car. I’m not proud of it. But I had to see him.”
“You could have called.”
“I did. For eighteen months.”
Vincent said nothing.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Diane said. “I’m here because Catherine’s son has not spoken in two years, and every time I ask to see him, I get a schedule from your assistant and a car that takes me to a park where a man with a gun stands twenty feet away.”
“He’s safe.”
“He’s silent.”
The words landed like a slap. Vincent felt the heat rise in his neck and forced it down.
“The court appointed a guardian ad litem,” Diane said. “Her name is Alma Reyes. She’ll visit the house. She’ll talk to Luca. She’ll talk to you.” She held out the envelope. “This is a copy. Not a threat. A courtesy.”
Vincent did not take it.
“You’ll lose,” he said.
“Maybe.” Diane looked past him at the Escalade, at the small shape behind the tinted glass. “But he’ll be heard. That’s more than he gets now.”
She set the envelope on the hood of the car, turned, and walked away. Vincent watched her get into a gray sedan and pull out of the lot without looking back.
In the car, Luca sat with his hands in his lap. Vincent fastened his own seatbelt, then said, “That was your grandmother.”
Nothing.
“She loves you.”
Nothing. But Luca’s fingers had curled around the green crayon again. He had carried it out of the diner without Vincent noticing.
Tony drove. The mansions of Alpine rose on either side of the road, set back behind hedges and iron gates.
The Romano house appeared at the end of a long drive: stone and glass, three stories, a lawn that cost more to maintain than most people’s mortgages.
Vincent had bought it for Catherine when she was pregnant.
She had wanted a garden.
He had given her a landscaped courtyard with a fountain and a gardener who came on Thursdays.
She had planted tomatoes in a corner of it anyway, in plastic buckets, because she said the fountain was too quiet.
The fountain was still running. The tomato buckets were gone.
Maria met them at the door. She was fifty-six, with kind eyes and gray hair pulled back in a neat bun, and she had been with the family for eight years.
She took one look at Vincent’s face and said, “What happened?”
“Diane filed for guardianship.”
Maria’s hand went to the doorframe. “She can’t.”
“She can. She has.”
“On what grounds?”
“The boy’s silence. The security. My associates.” He said the word the way Diane had, with air quotes in his voice. “She has a court date in three weeks.”
Maria looked down at Luca, who had slipped past her into the hall and was already climbing the stairs, his hand trailing along the banister. “Does he know?”
“He knows more than we tell him.”
That night, Vincent called Howard Klein, his lawyer, from the study. Howard was sixty-two, precise, and expensive, and he had been handling Romano Holdings’ legal affairs for a decade.
“The petition is real,” Howard said. “The guardian ad litem is real. Her name is Alma Reyes. She’s thorough. She’s not for sale.”
“I’m not buying her.”
“I didn’t say you were. I’m telling you what she’ll look at. The house. The staff. The security. The boy’s medical records. The school situation—or lack of one. And your business.”
“My business is legitimate.”
“The holding company is legitimate. The men who work for it are not all legitimate. Neither is your uncle.”
Vincent rubbed his eyes. “What do I need to do?”
“Show her a boy who is getting better.” Howard paused. “Is he getting better?”
Vincent thought of the crayon, the smile, the way Luca had eaten half a stack of pancakes without being coaxed. “Yes,” he said. “Slowly.”
“Then we document it. Every visit, every doctor, every good day. And Vincent—the petition includes an affidavit from Dr. Peterson.”
Vincent’s hand tightened on the phone. “Peterson is his tutor.”
“He was. He’s also the affidavit. He says Luca has made no measurable progress in fourteen months and that you’ve refused to consider residential treatment.”
“I never refused.”
“He says you did.”
The study was silent.
Through the window, Vincent could see the courtyard, the fountain lit from below, the dark shapes of the hedges.
Somewhere upstairs, Maria was running a bath for Luca, the water drumming against porcelain.
“Howard,” Vincent said quietly. “I need you to fix this.”
“I can’t fix the truth. I can only present it better. If the boy is improving, we need proof. Not for me. For the judge.”
After he hung up, Vincent climbed the stairs. Luca’s door was closed. Vincent stood outside it for a long moment, the way he did most nights, one hand flat against the wood.
“Goodnight, son,” he said.
May you like
No answer. He had not expected one.
But as he turned away, he heard something on the other side of the door—a small sound, the rustle of paper, the scratch of a crayon moving across a page. He stood there until it stopped.
