Chapter 93: The Price of Honesty

Dante's voice carried through the cameras before I reached the end of the hall. "I abandoned Elena Vale because I chose to believe claims I never verified." The reporters had packed themselves behind the rope line outside the independent unit, shoulder to shoulder beneath the washed-out morning lights. Somebody had turned the lobby into a stage before the rain had dried on my coat. Dante stood alone in front of them. He had changed nothing. Blood still marked the edge of his mouth. His damaged shoulder held stiff beneath his shirt. But he did not point at anyone else when the questions began to hit. "Did you know she was pregnant?" "No," he said. "I knew she was hurting. I chose not to ask why." The crowd shifted like one animal. "Did that decision put the Moretti heir at risk?" His jaw moved once. "It put a mother and her child at risk. That is the truth." That was all the reporters needed. Not because they cared about Noah's fever upstairs. Not because they cared what five years had cost me. They cared that Dante Moretti had just admitted he had let pride and a lie decide the fate of a woman carrying blood his family now called valuable. "Shareholders will see this as proof of reckless judgment!" someone shouted. "They should," Dante said. I stopped beside the rope. For one dangerous second, every lens swung toward me. I did not smile. I did not take Dante's hand. I did not give anyone the soft, forgiving picture they had come to buy. "Ms. Vale," a woman called, pushing forward with her microphone. "Are you standing beside him now?" "I'm standing beside my son," I said. The woman caught my sleeve before I could move past her. Her fingers closed over the same arm Vittoria had bruised the night before. I turned hard and pulled free. "Don't touch me." The microphone dipped. The woman stepped back. "He said what he did," I told her. My voice did not rise, but the lobby went quiet around it. "You don't get to turn me into the proof that it hurt less." Then I stepped away from the rope line. Dante saw me. Something moved across his face—relief, maybe, that I had heard him; shame, certainly, that I had heard him in front of strangers. I gave him neither rescue nor punishment. I just kept walking toward the elevator that would take me back to Noah. Vittoria blocked my path. She had traded her rain coat for black silk, as if the storm had been scheduled for her convenience. Bianca stood at her shoulder, pale and watchful, one hand wrapped around Vittoria's elbow. "How moving," Vittoria said. "My son has finally discovered confession." Behind her, two Moretti executives had pushed through the lobby doors. They did not look at Dante. They looked at Vittoria. That was the move. Not a vote. Not a signed page waved for the cameras. Their bodies made a corridor for her while the rope line bent toward her voice. Vittoria took the microphone from the startled reporter. "Dante's personal failures have created immediate risk for this family and its holdings," she said. "Until the shareholders are protected from further damage, I will direct the Moretti response." The words landed with the clean finality of a door locking. Dante came off the small platform. One of the executives put out an arm—not touching him, not quite blocking him, but making the new distance plain. He stopped. Vittoria saw it and smiled. "This is temporary," she continued for the cameras. "Necessary. Responsible." She made responsibility sound like a weapon she had invented. My phone vibrated against my palm. I did not look at it. Noah was upstairs. Dr. Hall was close. Maya had the door. Nothing in this lobby was worth forgetting that. Vittoria turned toward me, expecting me to flare, to defend Dante, to accuse her, to give the cameras a second spectacle. I gave her nothing. "You can manage his reputation," I said. "You do not manage my child." For the first time, the smile thinned. I walked past her. At the elevator, Maya waited with Noah's overnight bag looped over one shoulder. Her face was tight. "He's asleep," she said. "Dr. Hall is with him." The air came back into my lungs. Then she held out a slim gray envelope. "This was left at the desk for you. No name." I took it, keeping the bag's dinosaur clip caught around my other wrist. Inside was a single card and a sealed proxy slip. I did not need every line to understand the dangerous part. A block of Moretti shares. Delegated to my vote. No sender. No explanation. At the bottom, someone had written in blue ink: *Use them before she does.* Vittoria was still speaking to the cameras behind me. Dante stood outside the rope line, stripped of the room he had once owned. Noah slept upstairs with a fever I still could not fight away by force of will. I folded the card and put it beside Gabriel's recorder in my pocket. Someone had placed a weapon in my hand and expected me to turn it toward Vittoria.