The Don's Secret Heir

Chapter 16: Luca Digs

Marco POV

Luca came in at nine with a file that was much thicker than the one he had yesterday.

He sat down across from me without being asked. That meant he had things to say, and he had already decided he was going to say them. I closed the work I was doing and waited for him to start.

"NOIR DONNA," he said. He opened the folder and turned the first page toward me. "On the outside, it looks clean. Real money is coming in, she has real clients, and she has a real product. The autumn clothes sold out in only six weeks in three different countries. The shop in Paris makes its own profit. They even have a waiting list for private meetings."

"She built it the right way," I said.

"She built it very well." He turned another page. "Sofia Lanza, twenty-eight, runs the daily business. She handles the work, the clients, and the shipping. She has been there since the start, whenever that start actually was. She has a business degree, no criminal record, and no family ties that matter." He paused for a second. "Lanza is the public face of the company. Valentina Greco stays in the background. She goes to industry parties and she signs the contracts, but she doesn't talk to the news, she doesn't do interviews, and she doesn't put herself in rooms where she doesn't need to be."

"She is being careful," I noted.

"Very careful." He turned another page. "The Paris shop is real. The Milan office is real. Her deals with suppliers are mostly clean. There is a bank account in another country that is worth looking at, but I can't prove anything yet." He stopped. "Then there is this."

He turned the page and pushed the file across the desk toward me.

I looked at it.

They were school records. They were incomplete, pulled from a database my contact found through secrets I did not ask about. It was a child, a boy, almost five years old. He was signed up at a private school in Como under a last name that Luca had marked in red pen.

Cannot fully trace. Name does not match the mother or anyone she knows.

I read that line two times.

"The boy," I said. "How old is he?"

"Almost five," Luca said. "He turned five in March."

I looked at the page. I started to do the math in my head without even trying to. It was the kind of math you do when you already guess the answer, and your brain finds the numbers before you can tell it to stop.

March. Five years old now. He was born about four years and nine months ago. That meant he was started about five years and six months ago.

Five years and six months ago, I had been with Valentina.

I closed the folder.

"I need to know where she was," I said. "Not what she built. I want to know where she was living and moving for the first year after she left Florence. I want addresses and every move she made."

Luca was quiet for a moment. "That is a different kind of search, Marco."

"I know exactly what kind of search it is."

"Can I ask why?"

I looked at him. He looked back at me. Luca had worked for me for seven years. He had earned the right to ask, and that was the only reason I did not just tell him no.

"Just find it," I said.

He picked up the file and stood up. At the door, he stopped. This was becoming a habit I was going to have to fix. "Marco."

"What is it?"

"If there is something in that first year that matters," he said carefully, "it is going to change everything."

"I know that."

"Are you sure you want to know?"

I looked at him for a long time. Outside my window, the city of Florence was busy. The river was flat and grey. The bridges were full of people who had nowhere special to be.

"Find it," I said.

He left.

I worked through the afternoon without stopping. There was enough real work to fill three days if I let it, shipping choices, a legal problem in Prato, and two calls about a deal in Rome that had been stuck for a month. I made choices. I moved things forward. I did not let myself think about a school record with a name that could not be traced.

I did not let myself think about the math.

My mother, Carmela, had dinner at seven. She always had dinner at seven in the big dining room of our family villa. She had lived there for thirty years. The table had seats for twelve people, but it was set for only two when I arrived.

The housekeeper brought the first plate. My mother was acting happy, which was normal, but tonight the happiness felt different. It was careful and too bright. It was the kind of happy she used when she was watching something and waiting for it to happen.

"How is the problem in Prato?" she asked.

"It’s moving," I said.

"And the deal in Rome?"

"It’s getting better."

She smiled. She asked about Luca, and about a cousin who was getting married soon. She even told me about a house she thought I should buy. I answered her. I ate the food. It was always good; my mother had never served a bad meal in thirty years.

Between the second and third course, she looked at me with a specific look. She had used this look since I was a child. It was the look she gave when she knew something and was deciding how to say it.

"I saw you speak to her."

"It was short."

"Marco." She set her fork down. "That woman being back in Florence is not good for you."

I looked at my plate. I thought about the file with the child's school record. I thought about the math again.

"She is running a business," I said. "She is not back for good. She only came for a party."

"She wore green," my mother said, like that explained everything.

I looked up at her.

She looked back at me with the calm feeling of someone who had been right about things before and expected to be right again.

I put my napkin on the table and stood up.

"Goodnight, Mamma," I said.

She reached out and put her hand over mine before I could walk away. Her hand was small, dry, and very sure. It was the same hand that had fixed my tie before school and signed papers after my father died. She had made a thousand choices for this family over thirty years.

"She is not the same girl she was," my mother said quietly. "Whatever you are thinking, she is not that person anymore."

I pulled my hand away.

"Goodnight," I said again.

The drive back to the city took twenty minutes. I drove without music or phone calls. I wanted the time to be empty.

But it wasn't empty.

At a red light, I picked up my phone and opened the report Luca had given me that afternoon. I scrolled past the business parts and the money parts.

I stopped at the photo of her.

It was the same one from yesterday. An event six months ago. She was outside the Milan shop in a dark coat. She wasn't looking at the camera. She was talking to someone whose back was to the photo. Her face had that careful, guarded look. It was the look of someone who had learned to show nothing to the world.

She had not looked like that five years ago. Five years ago, she was open and direct. She told the truth even when it was a problem. Back then, she did not know how to act or hide.

She had learned.