Chapter 6 - NINE O'CLOCK FRIDAY
The conference room camera gave everyone a distorted, faintly blue appearance. Luca watched his own company directors on the screen, a man recovering in a hospital room while strangers debated whether he was still fit to be heard.
The board chair, Sebastian Vale, opened with a reminder that the meeting was about interim company governance, not a legal determination of personal capacity. Mara had insisted the distinction be recorded in the minutes. Sebastian repeated it twice before Salvatore Bellini stopped shifting in his chair.
Vanessa began with prepared sympathy. “We all love Luca. No one here wants to embarrass him. But the business has a duty to protect its employees and investors while he receives treatment.”
Luca leaned toward the microphone. “Then protect the business. Don't pretend that means you get to decide whether I can speak.”
She flinched but continued. “His episodes have been escalating for months.”
“What documentation are you relying on?” Mara asked.
“Dr. Shaw's assessment.”
“Which is now disputed and the subject of an investigation. The hospital's independent assessment is in your packet, including a current evaluation of Mr. Moretti's ability to understand and participate.”
Salvatore crossed his arms. “A twenty-four-hour observation doesn't erase months of deterioration.”
“Nor does a contested report prove a permanent condition,” Sebastian said. “Let counsel finish.”
The directors looked at the document Dr. Patel had prepared. Miriam presented operating reports showing that Luca's companies had continued meeting obligations and that most questionable changes to the Lucia House classification originated in Bellini-linked departments, not from Luca's usual business team.
That last point mattered. Nobody could claim Luca had personally reviewed every paper during the months when he felt ill, but the new transactions weren't evidence that he had made reckless independent decisions either.
Director Harold Finch, who had worked with Luca's father, cleared his throat. “I want to know whether Luca approved the Bellini medical partnership.”
“I signed the original services agreement,” Luca said. “I did not understand every access provision. That's my responsibility, and we're reviewing it.”
Salvatore leaned forward triumphantly. “Then you admit poor judgment.”
“Yes,” Luca answered. “I'm a businessman who made a bad agreement. That doesn't make every later act by another person my choice. If you want my mistakes on the record, put them there. Put theirs there too.”
I sat just outside the frame with Daniel. I had chosen not to participate in the board discussion. I was a medical witness, not a corporate director, and my employment complaint remained unresolved. Still, hearing Luca accept responsibility instead of declaring himself blameless changed how I saw him.
Vanessa held up a document. “There's also the matter of urgent protections for Lucia House and the harbor corridor. Without an interim representative, the company may lose valuable acquisition opportunities.”
“Those are charitable facilities, not opportunities to be acquired,” Francesca said from a separate video connection. She had asked for permission to address the property question and received it.
Salvatore smiled thinly. “With respect, Francesca, sentiment doesn't pay maintenance costs.”
“No,” she replied. “Donations and transparent budgets do. Have you read either?”
Miriam provided the figures. Lucia House's operating deficit was within its planned charitable funding; the financial emergency described in the Bellini proposal did not exist. The anticipated profits arose from selling land after closing the residence.
Sebastian examined the numbers. “Why wasn't this in the first board packet?”
No one answered.
Then Vanessa opened another file. “I have a supplemental physician's statement.”
Mara sat straighter. “From whom?”
“A specialist who reviewed Luca's ongoing cognitive problems.”
The document appeared on the screen. It was signed by a physician whose name I didn't recognize and described a patient who allegedly could not consistently identify his relatives or understand legal obligations.
Luca stared at it. “That man has never met me.”
Vanessa shook her head. “Luca, you've forgotten so many appointments—”
“I checked the name against my appointment history,” Mara interrupted. “There is no documented examination by this physician. We have asked the provider to confirm the basis for the opinion.”
Sebastian refused to admit the statement as an uncontested assessment. His face betrayed his discomfort.
“We're not deciding this from an unsigned explanation of how somebody supposedly examined an absent patient,” he said.
Salvatore struck the table with his palm. “You're putting the entire company at risk!”
“Then present reliable evidence of the risk.”
For nearly an hour they debated the authority to approve new contracts, the limits of existing signatories, and whether contested medical material should be used in a governance vote. The board eventually voted to defer any decision to remove Luca from his executive role pending independent review. It also ordered an audit of the Bellini-linked transactions and suspended new transfers affecting Lucia House until the audit and charitable trust obligations were assessed.
The vote was narrow. Luca remained in charge, but only after his company placed temporary dual-signature safeguards on certain major transactions. He agreed without protest.
Vanessa stared at the screen. “You don't understand what you're doing.”
“We've made a provisional decision,” Sebastian said. “That is exactly what we understand.”
Salvatore disconnected without saying another word.
Luca leaned back. The room at the hospital went quiet. I had expected triumph, but he looked as if he had just returned from a funeral.
“Did I win?” he asked Mara.
“You prevented an immediate transfer of authority. That's important. The investigation is still beginning, and the disputed petition could still be pursued through the courts.”
He nodded. “Then we keep going.”
An hour later, Daniel received a call from Detective Price. The anonymous packet sent to the reporter had been traced through a contractor associated with Bellini Health. Investigators had also obtained a warrant for relevant clinic records and secured an independent forensic copy of the disputed chart, preserving its change history.
“That's good,” I said when Daniel told me.
“It's progress, not a verdict,” he answered.
I was glad he'd learned to say that.
The afternoon brought less welcome news. My agency sent a formal notice confirming that Vanessa had lodged a complaint alleging I had endangered Luca by interrupting an authorized treatment. The notice also stated I could submit records and request an independent review. My lawyer, a woman named Leah Grant, told me to preserve every message and avoid public arguments.
“Even the accurate ones,” she said.
“Especially the accurate ones, apparently.”
She smiled. “There's a time to speak. We'll make sure you're heard where it matters.”
I returned to the hospital to collect the last of my belongings from a nurses' locker. At the elevators, a middle-aged man in a maintenance jacket approached.
“Nurse Reed?”
I turned. “Yes?”
“My name's Tomas Vega. I work in the mansion's kitchen and equipment rooms. Daniel said I could talk to you.”
His face was lined with worry. He kept twisting a brass key ring between his fingers.
“Is something wrong?”
“I replaced a refrigerator unit in Vanessa's private sitting room last month,” he said. “I saw insulated medicine carriers, several of them. She told me they belonged to her family clinic.”
“Did you touch the medication?”
“No. I just checked the power. But the equipment kept failing. Twice somebody disconnected the alarm to stop it sounding.”
“Did you report that?”
“I put it in my service log. The next day the log vanished from the maintenance computer.”
Daniel joined us and took over the conversation, making sure Tomas was comfortable speaking to investigators. Before the man left, he handed over a handwritten reference to the work-order numbers.
“The originals should still be with the equipment contractor,” he said. “I don't know what's in those carriers. I just know somebody didn't want me asking questions.”
Later that evening, when the hospital corridors had begun to quiet, Luca asked me to sit with him for five minutes. We sat at opposite ends of a narrow sofa in the family lounge.
“Vanessa called me just before the meeting,” he said. “She told me she could make it all go away if I called you a liar.”
My stomach clenched. “What did you say?”
“Nothing. I hung up.”
He watched a nurse pushing a supply cart down the hallway. “For three months I kept thinking I was losing pieces of myself. I didn't tell anyone how frightened I was. I thought a man like me wasn't allowed to be frightened.”
“Fear isn't a professional failure,” I said.
He gave a tired smile. “You make things sound simple.”
“They aren't. But that part is.”
He hesitated. “When I came to Chicago, my father taught me never to let anyone see me uncertain. I built a business around the idea that I could predict everything.”
“And what did you learn?”
“That I wasn't even paying attention to my own house.”
I didn't rush to contradict him. People have to face the harm caused by their inattention if they want to change it.
“Then pay attention now,” I said. “To the right things.”
Luca looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded.
At eight, Dr. Patel returned with updated medical results and discussed follow-up care. The immediate episode had resolved, but Luca needed observation, a full medication review, and ongoing evaluation. She stressed that the investigation of the suspicious injections belonged to both medical specialists and law enforcement, not to rumor.
Just as she finished, Detective Price called Daniel. Investigators had found a financial instrument included in the governance materials: a conditional bridge-financing agreement secured by the waterfront parcels.
It was dated weeks before the emergency meeting. It carried Luca's electronic authorization.
And it named Bellini Development as the beneficiary if control of the properties changed.
“That's impossible,” Luca said when Daniel showed him the summary. “I never signed a bridge loan for Lucia House.”
Daniel's expression was grim. “The investigators don't know yet whether your credentials were used without consent. But the document exists.”
May you like
I looked at Luca, remembering how often he'd been told he was forgetting things.
He folded the page carefully, set it beside his hospital bed, and said, “Then this time we find out what happened before we decide what I remember.”
