Chapter 3 - The Sister They Chose
Miriam arrived at 8:43 carrying a leather bag, two coffees, and the expression of a woman prepared to disappoint several powerful men.
She asked Cosimo for a private room.
He gave her the study and left us alone.
I showed her the authorization involving Enzo.
Then I showed her photographs on my phone from the week it had supposedly been signed.
Giulia wearing a ridiculous college sweatshirt. A rainy Boston street. A hotel receipt.
“Helpful,” Miriam said. “Not everything we'll need, but helpful.”
“Cosimo thinks I signed it.”
“Then he's going to have to live with not knowing until the evidence answers him.”
She examined the documents I had brought in my bag from the engagement party. My identification. A bank card. A folded wedding schedule Sofia had insisted I carry.
At the back of the schedule was a list of legal documents I was supposed to sign before the wedding.
Miriam read it twice.
“Were you told what these were?”
“Routine arrangements. Property. Insurance.”
“One appears to concern voting authority over company shares. We need the actual document.”
I stared at her.
My mother had left each of us a financial interest in the family holding company. My father always said ours were small, practically ceremonial, and not worth discussing until we married.
Ceremonial things apparently required legal control.
“I need to go home,” I said.
Miriam put down the paper.
“For records?”
“And my sister.”
We went that afternoon.
Cosimo came in a separate car. He stayed outside the front gate with Matteo, which was the condition I had set.
My father had spent years teaching me that men respected boundaries only when other men enforced them.
I wanted to know whether one could respect a boundary I enforced myself.
The house looked exactly as it had before I left.
White stone. Iron gates. Flowers replaced before anyone could see them wilt.
My father waited in the front hall.
“You made your point,” he said. “Come inside.”
Miriam stepped out beside me.
His expression changed.
“Who is this?”
“My attorney.”
“We have attorneys.”
“You do.”
Sofia appeared on the staircase. Alessio followed a few steps behind her.
He looked at Miriam, then at me.
“Francesca. Quite an evening.”
“You should have stayed for the cake.”
“I understand my cousin is being very generous.”
“Then you understand something I haven't said.”
His smile remained. His eyes didn't participate.
My father directed us into the library.
Bellandi sat at the desk with a folder already open.
They had prepared the room before they prepared an explanation.
“I gather there are questions about some authorizations,” my father said.
I hadn't told him which records Cosimo possessed.
Miriam noticed. I saw her write something on her pad.
“There are questions about my client's financial authority and the use of her name,” she said.
Bellandi gave a small, wounded sigh.
“Francesca knows how these arrangements work.”
“Apparently not well enough,” I said. “I'd like the documents listed in my wedding packet.”
“Now isn't the time,” my father said.
“It was the time when I was supposed to marry Dominic.”
His mouth flattened.
Miriam made a formal request. Bellandi looked at my father before answering any question.
I watched that exchange and felt foolish for every evening I had spent imagining the accountant was the only person taking credit for my work.
My father had known.
He had let me stay grateful for access to a desk while using what I produced to keep himself powerful.
“Did you think I'd never find out?” I asked.
“I thought you understood your responsibilities.”
“You told me the work didn't matter.”
“I told you not to become arrogant about it.”
There was the distinction on which he had built my life.
Useful enough to depend on.
Never valuable enough to acknowledge.
Miriam obtained copies of the proposed documents. We would review them elsewhere. She was polite and unmovable until Bellandi handed them over.
Then I went upstairs to collect my things.
Giulia waited in my bedroom, sitting on the end of the bed with a backpack at her feet.
“Are you taking me?” she asked.
“If you want to come.”
She nodded so quickly I nearly cried.
We packed clothes. My laptop. The framed photograph of our mother in a striped shirt, laughing at something outside the frame.
She had died when I was twelve. People described her as delicate because they remembered that she preferred books to parties.
I remembered a woman who once made a restaurant manager apologize to a dishwasher in front of the entire staff.
Delicate depended on who was remembering.
Sofia stood in the doorway as I wrapped the photograph.
“So you're really doing this.”
“Packing? Yes.”
“You know what I mean.”
I looked at her engagement ring. Alessio had chosen a stone large enough to become a topic of conversation from another room.
“Do I?”
Her chin lifted.
“You have one bad night and suddenly everybody else is the enemy.”
I folded a sweater.
“It wasn't one night, Sofia. It was just the first one with enough witnesses.”
She looked away.
For a moment, I thought she would apologize.
Then Alessio called her name from downstairs, and the moment closed.
My father stopped us in the hall.
“Giulia stays.”
My sister's hand tightened around her backpack strap.
“She's nineteen,” Miriam said. “She decides where she goes.”
“I pay her tuition.”
I looked directly at him.
“Then I suppose we'll discover whether you think educating your daughter is a gift or a leash.”
His face went very still.
Miriam stood beside Giulia until we reached the car.
My father followed us down the steps.
“Ferraro will use you until you're no longer useful.”
I paused with my hand on the door.
“You would recognize the method.”
For once, he had no answer ready.
On the way to a hotel Miriam had arranged, Giulia kept looking over her shoulder.
“You don't have to check,” I said. “We're gone.”
She rubbed at a loose thread on her sleeve.
“Sofia knows something.”
I turned toward her.
“About what?”
“The money. I heard her arguing with Alessio last week. She told him she wasn't signing your name again.”
The city moved past the window.
May you like
My sister's voice grew smaller.
“She said once was already enough.”
