Chapter 8
Six months after Berth Four, Camilla requested to see me.
I said no.
Then changed my mind.
Not for closure.
I no longer believed closure was a door other people could open for me.
I went because I wanted to see whether fear still owned the room.
Federal detention interview rooms are ugly.
Gray walls.
Bolted table.
No marble.
No red wine.
No staff to humiliate.
Camilla entered wearing plain clothes.
She looked thinner.
Not transformed.
Just stripped of decoration.
She sat.
I stayed standing for a moment.
Then sat too.
“Hannah.”
“Camilla.”
She looked at my leg.
No visible bandage now.
Only scar.
“I’m sorry.”
I almost laughed.
“Which part?”
Her face tightened.
Fair question.
“The bruise.”
“You mean grabbing me.”
“Yes.”
“The cut.”
“Yes.”
“Threatening my mother’s medical support.”
“Yes.”
“Lying about me.”
“Yes.”
“Trying to burn the records room while I was inside.”
She looked away.
“Yes.”
I leaned back.
“That’s a lot for one sorry.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She nodded.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
“I thought if those records came out, my father would destroy everyone.”
“So you helped him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid.”
I waited.
She knew that was not enough.
“And I liked being powerful,” she added.
Better.
“I liked that people moved when I entered a room.”
I said nothing.
“I liked that staff were afraid of me.”
There.
Truth without excuse.
Then she looked at me.
“You were different.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You kept looking at me like I was pathetic.”
I stared.
“I was terrified of you.”
“But sometimes you looked at me like you could see the fear underneath.”
Interesting.
She punished perception.
Not disrespect.
“Is that why you targeted me?”
“Partly.”
“Mostly?”
“You heard the call.”
“Yes.”
She rubbed her hands together.
“My father said if you spoke, he would cut me off.”
I laughed softly.
“So you threatened my mother because your father threatened you.”
Camilla closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Fear passed downward.
Like debt.
Like inheritance.
I stood.
“Hannah.”
I stopped.
“I don’t expect forgiveness.”
“Good.”
She nodded.
“And I’m not giving you absolution because you admitted you enjoyed hurting people.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She looked at me.
“I’m trying.”
That phrase.
Everyone trying after damage.
Maybe trying mattered.
Maybe consequences mattered more.
Both could coexist.
I left.
Adrian waited in the lobby.
“You didn’t need to come.”
“I know.”
“You’re doing that annoying thing.”
“What?”
“Existing nearby in case I need something.”
He smiled.
“I can stop.”
“No.”
Choice.
Again.
We got lunch.
We were doing that more.
Coffee.
Lunch.
Walks.
Nothing secret.
Nothing fast.
I refused to become a trauma romance.
He understood.
Mostly.
One afternoon he offered to have a driver take me home every night after class.
“No.”
“It’s late.”
“No.”
“Chicago.”
“No.”
“Hannah.”
“Adrian.”
He sighed.
“Can I offer you a ride tonight?”
“Yes.”
He smiled.
The distinction mattered.
Ask.
Don’t arrange.
He was learning.
So was I.
The investigation expanded.
Federal prosecutors charged Salvatore with racketeering, forced labor conspiracy, obstruction, and other crimes.
Camilla faced financial and assault-related charges.
Lucia accepted responsibility for obstruction and conspiracy tied to Matteo’s death cover-up. The homicide questions remained complicated by evidence and time.
Adrian turned over company archives.
One set of documents created a new problem.
Current Romano projects used a subcontractor named Meridian Workforce.
Auditors found passport retention and illegal debt deductions.
Adrian immediately terminated the contract.
Workers panicked.
Not because Meridian was good.
Because losing the company meant losing housing.
I told him:
“You solved the contract and created a housing crisis.”
He stared.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Ask them.”
So he did.
Workers wanted temporary housing independent of the employer.
Legal support.
Direct hiring options.
Back-pay review.
Simple.
Not simple to implement.
But clear.
Adrian funded transition support through an independent nonprofit.
No Romano control.
Good.
Then my mother called one evening.
“Come home.”
Her voice was shaking.
“What happened?”
“A letter.”
I arrived twenty minutes later.
Plain envelope.
No return address.
Inside:
Hannah,
Your father was not killed in the warehouse fire.
I stared.
My mother went pale.
“What?”
I read again.
He survived.
Someone moved him.
The body buried under his name was not Thomas Miller.
My hands went numb.
No.
Not again.
Dead family members could not keep doing this.
I called Adrian.
He arrived with Marco.
My mother looked furious.
“Why is he here?”
“Because this involves his family.”
She accepted that reluctantly.
Marco examined the letter.
Typed.
No prints visible.
“What body?” Adrian asked.
I looked at Mom.
She sat.
The funeral had been closed casket because the remains were burned.
Identification used dental records supplied by the contractor.
Romano contractor.
My stomach dropped.
Adrian called federal investigators.
Old records could be checked.
Dental file signatures.
Dr. Paolo Russo.
Same doctor tied to Salvatore’s fake medical records.
Pattern.
Marco found the original fire report.
Three workers reportedly died.
Only two bodies recovered at scene.
Thomas’s body “identified later.”
Where?
Private morgue.
Owned by a Romano affiliate.
I felt sick.
“Why fake his death?”
No one answered.
Then my mother whispered:
“Because he knew where the ledger was.”
Adrian looked at her.
“You think they kept him alive?”
“For questioning.”
My throat closed.
“How long?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Federal agents searched historical detention properties tied to Salvatore.
One location:
an abandoned rehabilitation clinic in Indiana.
Closed seventeen years ago.
A maintenance invoice appeared six months after my father’s supposed death.
Private room.
Patient listed only as T.M.
My initials.
His.
Same.
Adrian looked at me.
“We go with federal agents.”
I nodded.
No private rescue.
No secrets.
Good.
The clinic was empty.
Dust.
Broken windows.
Old beds.
In a basement office, investigators found patient logs.
T.M.
Male, 38.
Multiple fractures.
Sedated.
Restricted visitor access.
Admitted two days after warehouse fire.
Discharged—
four months later.
Destination:
Unknown.
But one nurse had written a note:
Patient transferred by woman, initials L.R.
Lucia Romano.
When confronted, Lucia cried.
“I saved him.”
I stared through the video call.
“Saved?”
“Salvatore was going to kill him.”
“So you moved him.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Canada.”
My heart stopped.
“What happened after?”
“I gave him a new identity.”
“Did he live?”
“Yes.”
The world tilted.
“How long?”
Lucia whispered:
“Until three years ago.”
My father had lived twelve years after I buried him.
Twelve years.
Without me.
Without my mother.
I could not breathe.
Then Lucia said the worst part.
“He asked me not to tell you.”
And suddenly survival felt like another form of abandonment.
The exhumation investigation became emotionally brutal because certainty arrived slowly. Records conflicted. Dates were wrong. Officials wanted to verify before telling Hannah anything. She hated waiting, then realized careful verification was the opposite of how the Romano family had operated. They had acted first and manufactured certainty later. Procedure felt cruel only because secrecy had trained everyone to expect instant private answers.
After learning Thomas had survived the fire, Hannah spent days imagining alternate histories. What if he had come home after one year? Five? Ten? What if he had called once? What if Maria had known? Every version ended differently, and none existed. The mind can turn grief into an endless courtroom where hypothetical lives testify against the real one.
Her therapist asked her to separate two questions: Why did Thomas stay away? and Was staying away acceptable? The answers did not have to match. Fear, surveillance, shame, and Lucia’s warnings could explain his choice. Hannah could still decide the choice harmed her. Explanation was not acquittal.
That distinction helped when Lucia later asked whether Hannah believed she had saved Thomas. Hannah answered, “You saved his body. I don’t know what else you saved.” Lucia cried. Hannah did not apologize. The sentence was not cruel. It was precise.
Adrian struggled with similar questions about Matteo. If Lucia’s sabotage was meant only to prevent him from reaching a federal meeting, did that reduce what she had done? Legally, intent mattered. Emotionally, Matteo remained dead. Adrian eventually stopped demanding one answer solve both realities.
The two of them did not bond because they were wounded. They bonded because they could sit beside complexity without forcing the other to simplify. Sometimes their conversations ended unresolved. Sometimes that was the healthiest ending available.
May you like
Lucia eventually gave Hannah the address of Thomas’s last apartment in Thunder Bay. Hannah did not travel there immediately. She waited until she wanted to, not until anyone told her healing required it. Months later, she visited with Maria. The apartment belonged to someone else by then. They stood across the street for ten minutes, cried, bought coffee, and left. No revelation arrived. That was strangely comforting.
On the flight home from Canada, Maria admitted she had spent years imagining Thomas as either a martyr or a coward. The letters destroyed both versions. Hannah said that might be a gift, though not the kind anyone would choose. They could finally grieve a real man instead of a story built from missing information.
