Chapter 5: What Claudia Carried
Claudia arrived in fifty-three minutes.
Valentino was in the study when she knocked.
He told her to come in.
She stepped inside and stopped when she saw the envelope on the desk, and the wooden box beside it, and the way her brother was sitting — not behind the desk, but in the chair opposite it, waiting.
She sat down without being asked.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
"How much do you know?" she said finally.
"Dario Mancini."
Her eyes closed.
"He told you about Verona."
"He told me everything about Verona." Valentino leaned forward.
"I need to hear it from you.
Not from a dead man's confession.
From you."
Claudia pressed her hands together in her lap.
When she looked up, her eyes were wet but her voice was steady.
"I was seventeen.
Mama told me we were going to visit one of Papa's old business contacts.
She said it was a formality.
Paperwork." She stopped.
"When we got there, I realized it wasn't paperwork.
She had a folder.
She spread things out on the desk.
She and Renato talked for a long time and I sat in the corner and I didn't understand most of it."
"But you understood enough."
"I understood she was building something against Elena.
I didn't know exactly what.
I was seventeen and I was frightened and when I tried to ask her about it on the drive home she told me it was family business and that I would understand when I was older." Claudia's voice cracked on the last word.
She steadied it.
"And then I got older.
And I understood.
And by then it was too late."
"Elena was already gone."
"Yes."
Valentino stood up.
He walked to the window.
The garden below was still.
Isolde's small swing moved slightly in the wind.
"You've known for years," he said.
"That what Mama showed me about Elena was fabricated."
"I suspected.
I didn't have proof.
And I told myself — I told myself that if I spoke, it would only hurt you more.
That Elena was already gone and nothing I said would bring her back." Her voice dropped.
"I know how that sounds."
"It sounds like something you've been telling yourself for a long time."
"Yes." She didn't argue it.
"It does."
He turned from the window.
"Claudia.
Did Elena ever speak to you directly?
Before she d*ed?"
Claudia was quiet for a moment.
"Once," she said.
"About four months before the end.
She came to my apartment.
She said she thought someone in the family was working against her and she wanted to know if I knew anything." Claudia's jaw tightened.
"I told her I didn't."
The room held that sentence for a long moment.
"She came to you," Valentino said.
"She was frightened.
She asked you directly."
"Yes."
"And you lied to her."
Claudia didn't look away.
"Yes."
Valentino sat back down.
He picked up Renato's confession from the envelope and held it without reading it again.
"I'm not going to tell you I forgive you right now," he said.
"I don't know yet if I do.
But I need to know — are you willing to give a full statement to my lawyer?
Everything.
Verona, the office, what you saw, what Elena said to you.
All of it."
"Yes," Claudia said immediately.
"Whatever you need."
"Even if it implicates Mama directly."
A pause.
Shorter than he expected.
"Even then," she said.
He nodded once.
He reached for his phone.
"There's one more thing," Claudia said.
He stopped.
"The clause Elena found — the one about Isolde's inheritance.
The medical incapacity clause." She reached into her bag and removed a folded document.
She set it on the desk.
"Elena gave me a copy.
The night she came to my apartment.
She said she wanted someone in the family to have it in case something happened to her." Claudia's voice was barely above a whisper.
"I've kept it for six years.
I didn't know what to do with it."
Valentino looked at the document.
He looked at his sister.
"She trusted you," he said.
"I know." Claudia's composure finally broke — not loudly, just a sharp intake of breath, and then she pressed her hand over her mouth and looked at the floor.
"I know she did."
Valentino picked up the document.
He unfolded it carefully.
He read it through once, then set it with the envelope.
He stood, crossed the room, and sat in the chair beside his sister.
He didn't put his arm around her.
He didn't tell her it was all right.
He said: "We're going to fix what we can fix.
Starting with Isolde."
Claudia nodded.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"What are you going to do about Mama?" she asked.
Valentino looked at the envelope on the desk.
At six years of fabricated letters.
At a dead man's guilt.
At a document his wife had pressed into his sister's hands four months before she ran out of time.
May you like
"I'm going to let the law do what I can't," he said.
His phone was already in his hand.
