A Message Sent in Her Name
Chapter 02 - A Message Sent in Her Name
By the time the guests left, the roses had begun to smell stale. It was nearly midnight. A valet retrieved coats beneath the front portico while the last of the champagne stood abandoned in narrow glasses. Luca let Vanessa's father kiss her cheek and drive away without asking why his daughter had made an international travel reservation behind his back.
He wanted an answer that did not have an audience.
Sofia had been taken upstairs by Mrs. DeLuca after checking, twice, that Emily would not be dismissed. Luca promised that she would not. He wished she had trusted him after the first promise.
In his study Vanessa stood beside the fireplace with her arms folded. She had removed her diamonds and put them in a small velvet pouch, a domestic gesture that seemed unbearable to him.
“What did you mean,” he asked, “that the message wasn't meant for the doctor?”
“I meant the doctor's office wasn't supposed to pass it along. There was a separate administrative channel.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I was trying to spare you a difficult conversation.”
Luca looked at her. For two years she had been excellent at difficult conversations, provided someone else was excluded from them. She could persuade a creditor to postpone payment, soothe his investors, select the right flowers for a widow. At home her gentleness toward Sofia had seemed almost maternal. Now he was not sure what he had mistaken for tenderness.
“Start with the beginning.”
Vanessa took her phone from her clutch. She showed him an email addressed to a coordinator at Villa San Giusto, a private rehabilitation residence outside Milan. It said Sofia became emotionally distressed when Luca was involved in medical discussions, and for the child's protection all communication should pass through Vanessa.
“The language came from Dr. Ferretti's team,” she said.
“Did Sofia tell you she was distressed by me?”
“Not in those words.”
“Did anyone ask her?”
Vanessa closed the email. “You're making this sentimental. You know she freezes when you come into her therapy room. You have no idea how much pressure she feels to please you.”
That last part was true. Luca had once seen Sofia struggle to lift her foot while he stood watching; afterward she apologized for making him late to a meeting. He had taken her apology as evidence of good manners rather than fear.
“Even if that's true,” he said, “you don't put words in her mouth.”
He asked for the medical report he had signed six weeks earlier. Vanessa brought up a second document. It recommended a structured overseas program and described limited benefit from further supervised standing at home. The signature at the bottom read *Dr. Lorenzo Ferretti*.
“Have you met him?” Luca asked.
“By video.”
“Have I?”
“He offered three appointments. You missed them.”
The fact struck with humiliating precision. He remembered an afternoon of unanswered calendar alerts while he negotiated port leases. He remembered telling Vanessa to handle whatever could be handled.
“Send me the original report,” he said. “Not a photograph. The email it came with.”
She hesitated long enough to answer him.
“I'll ask for it tomorrow.”
Luca called his assistant, Marco, in front of her. Marco found the file within minutes but could not find an original medical email. The PDF had been uploaded to the family portal from an account belonging to Moretti Family Services. Its document properties listed a creation date three days before the doctor's purported evaluation.
Vanessa said someone might have reformatted it. Luca thought that possible. He was not ready to mistake suspicion for proof.
From the hall came the muffled sound of a television, then Mrs. DeLuca reminding someone to turn it down. Life was continuing just outside this room, indifferent to contracts and investigations. Luca wanted that life to remain ordinary for Sofia. He also knew that keeping things ordinary could no longer mean keeping them secret.
There was a knock. Mrs. DeLuca stood in the doorway, still wearing her house shoes. “Forgive me, Mr. Moretti. Emily asked whether the morning exercises should continue.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Vanessa canceled them last Thursday.”
“She's lying,” Vanessa said at once.
Mrs. DeLuca did not react. She held out the printed schedule. Three months of sessions had been crossed through and marked *parent request*. At the bottom was Luca's name.
He knew the handwriting. It was not his, but the scrawl resembled the electronic signature his office placed on routine letters.
“Who gave you this?”
“Your attorney's secretary. I kept it because Emily insisted Sofia hadn't asked to stop.”
Vanessa approached him. “Luca, don't do this over an administrative mistake. Not tonight.”
He studied Mrs. DeLuca, a woman who had once sat beside his dying mother for eighteen hours because no one else could bear to. “Why didn't you show me sooner?”
“I tried. Marco said you were not to be disturbed about the girl's treatments unless there was an emergency.”
Her cheeks colored. “I should have come anyway.”
Luca felt the weight of that confession settle beside his own. Everyone in this house had been taught that his time was more valuable than Sofia's questions.
He left Vanessa in the study and went upstairs. Sofia's bedroom door was partly open. A night-light made a pale circle on the rug. She was reading a library book with the covers bent back, pretending not to wait for him.
“May I sit?” he asked.
She made room on the edge of the bed. He was careful not to put his arm around her without invitation. Elena had taught him that much.
“Did you ask to stop therapy?”
“No.”
“Did you want to go to Italy?”
Sofia shrugged. “Vanessa said maybe I could go to a special school and start over. She said you and she would visit when work was easier.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I didn't want to make trouble.” She traced a seam in the blanket. “If I couldn't stand tonight, would you still want me at the wedding?”
Luca could not answer immediately. Not because the answer was complicated, but because he understood what he had allowed her to imagine.
“I want you there in your wheelchair, in your bed, in your pajamas,” he said. “I want you there because you're Sofia.”
She turned away, then back. “There's something in my desk. Emily said I should decide whether to give it to you.”
From beneath a stack of drawings she took an envelope addressed in her careful handwriting: *Things I Am Not Supposed to Tell Dad.* Inside were two canceled appointments, a copy of a letter supposedly written by Sofia, and one photograph.
May you like
In the photograph Vanessa stood outside a Chicago law office beside a man Luca recognized instantly. Not Dr. Ferretti. His own attorney, Julian Vale, whom Vanessa had sworn she'd never met before the engagement.
On the back Sofia had written the date and seven words: *They said Dad had already agreed to everything.*
