The Name on the Last Page
Chapter 13 - The Name on the Last Page
Enzo Moretti had been dead for five years. His portrait was in the attic, and people still lowered their voices when they spoke of him. Luca had spent most of his adult life pretending the old man's empire could be inherited without inheriting the habits that held it together.
Elena's letter destroyed that pretense in eight lines. She wrote that Enzo had awarded transport and security contracts to Carlo Bellini years before his death, despite repeated maintenance complaints. Julian continued the arrangement after Enzo died, hiding payments among unrelated shipping invoices. Elena did not accuse anyone of intending an accident. She asked for inspections to be verified before another family was harmed.
“I knew about some of the contracts,” Luca told Helen. “My father called them favors.”
“Did you know the inspection reports were false?”
“No.”
“Then say exactly that. And don't claim to know more than you do.”
He returned to the study and opened files he'd refused to examine since Enzo's death. They contained ordinary accounting beside ugly things: settlement payments with vague descriptions, invoices approved without receipts, a list of subcontractors who were told to avoid written communications. The old system had not required a criminal mastermind at every desk. It had needed people who kept making things easy for the man above them.
Luca gave the files to Helen for preservation and review. She warned him that some employees might accuse him of wrongdoing, and some might be right. He had expected to feel a dramatic wave of repentance. Mostly he felt ashamed and frightened. He made himself stay with the feeling rather than convert it into a performance.
At the hospital fundraiser's old offices, Teresa met Vanessa for lunch. They had not eaten together without Carlo in years. Teresa wore a gray cardigan and ordered soup. Vanessa said she might face legal consequences for the false medical records and the overseas placement paperwork. She had told her attorney what she did and what she did not do; she was no longer trying to put her father's needs ahead of Sofia's.
“I thought you would hate me,” Vanessa said.
“I hate what you did,” Teresa replied. “I also remember teaching you that a family survives by keeping its troubles inside the house. I was wrong. I don't get to pretend I wasn't.”
Vanessa looked out at the street. A woman was helping an elderly man across a crosswalk, moving at his pace rather than pulling his arm. “I don't think Luca will ever forgive me.”
“Perhaps not. Forgiveness isn't a payment you collect after telling the truth.”
Teresa reached for her daughter's hand. Vanessa let her take it.
In Chicago investigators interviewed Samuel Rizzo again and obtained additional records from the fleet office. The original brake warning had been entered into the system before the accident. Testimony, dispatch logs, and authenticated emails supported serious allegations of falsified maintenance and deliberate release of an unsafe vehicle. Questions about the precise causes of the crash would require expert review and legal proceedings. Luca did not insist the investigators call it murder. He knew wanting someone to blame would not make the evidence simpler.
The bank maintained the hold on the disputed $4.8 million, and June began an independent audit of Sofia's trust. A court-appointed professional reviewed all proposed care expenses. Julian ceased representing the family; his conduct became the subject of professional and criminal inquiries. Carlo's companies lost contracts as their records were examined. Vanessa provided testimony and was advised that her own role remained under investigation.
Luca's shipping business underwent a separate audit. Several managers resigned. An independent board was established, and Luca stepped back from operations while misconduct was investigated. He gave up more control in a month than Enzo had relinquished in a lifetime. This did not make him innocent. It allowed other people to check his work.
One afternoon Sofia found him at the kitchen table with a calendar covered in brightly colored notes. He was planning school pickups, therapy appointments, and a meeting about accessible renovations.
“Why is everything written twice?” she asked.
“Because I'm learning to do what Mrs. DeLuca does without forgetting things.”
“Mrs. DeLuca doesn't need a calendar.”
“Mrs. DeLuca could probably run the city.”
Sofia laughed and rolled up beside him. “You put 'ask Sofia' on Tuesday.”
“That's about the ramp. I want you to tell the builder where it should go.”
“By the front door.”
“That's what I thought.”
“No, Dad. You asked. I'm telling you.”
He held up both hands in surrender. “By the front door.”
They visited June in Wisconsin the next weekend. Luca drove himself. Sofia sat in the back with a blanket and a drawing pad. At a rest stop he asked whether she wanted him to bring the wheelchair around, and she said yes. He brought it without comment. After lunch she asked for help with her braces and practiced a short supported stand beside a bench, using a plan Ruth had approved. When she was tired, she sat back down. The world continued.
June's house smelled of cinnamon and old books. She had kept a blue wooden chest that belonged to Elena. Inside were photographs, school essays, a scarf, and a bundle of letters for Sofia to open as she grew older. June told Luca she wanted to share the chest now, slowly, allowing Sofia to choose what she was ready to see.
That night Sofia took one letter to her room. It had been written when she was a toddler. Elena described her stubborn refusal to wear matching socks and the way she insisted on bringing a spoon to bed. Sofia read it aloud and laughed, then pressed it under her pillow.
Luca thought the story might finally be turning toward peace. He had paid attention to each small event because he had lost his right to assume there would be another.
On Sunday morning June found him in the garden. She was holding a second letter, addressed not to Sofia but to him, dated the week before the accident. Elena's handwriting looked hurried, unlike the careful letters for their daughter.
May you like
“I wasn't going to give you this,” June said. “Not until the investigations finished. But it's about something the courts can't decide.”
Luca took the envelope. On the outside Elena had written: *If he ever asks whether I still loved him, give him this.*
