Chapter 7
Mr. Patel set his phone beside the inspection packet.
“The claim is pending,” he said. “I’m preparing a response and asking the company to preserve the records behind it. For now, nobody should touch the cabinet or the papers we’ve already documented.”
Emily sat at the kitchen table, her mother’s letter closed in front of her. Outside the window, Daniel’s security team remained at the edge of the property. The house was quiet, but it didn’t feel peaceful yet.
Luca stood a few feet away, hands loose at his sides. He looked as if he wanted to reach for Emily and wasn’t sure he had the right.
She looked up at him.
“I want to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly.”
“Of course.”
“How did you not notice?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
Emily’s voice wavered, but she held his gaze. “I called you nearly twenty times. You called me every Sunday. How could all those calls disappear without you wondering why I stopped answering?”
The question landed harder than the company’s claim had. Luca lowered his eyes to the table.
“I kept telling myself you were busy,” he said. “Vanessa said you were traveling, or working, or needed space. When I asked why I hadn’t heard from you, she always had an answer.”
“And you believed her.”
“I did.”
Emily looked down at the letter. One finger traced its folded edge.
“You didn’t think to call me yourself?”
“I thought I had.” He swallowed. “I thought I’d left messages. I thought you knew I was waiting to hear from you.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.” His voice was quiet. “It isn’t.”
Mr. Patel sat back, giving them room. I stayed beside Emily, close enough that she could reach for me if she wanted.
Luca drew a slow breath.
“I didn’t choose not to speak to you, sweetheart. But I let someone else explain your silence for you. I should have checked. I should have called from another number, driven to see you, sent a letter—anything except accept an easy answer.”
Emily’s eyes shone.
“You trusted her more than you trusted me.”
The words made him flinch.
“I trusted the explanation because it was easier than facing the possibility that I’d hurt you,” he said. “That was selfish. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t offer to fix the house, call someone, or make the problem vanish. He didn’t ask her to forgive him. He simply sat with what she had said.
After a moment, Emily took out her phone.
“I saved the call history because I thought maybe I was remembering it wrong.”
She unlocked the screen and turned it toward him. The list showed dates spread across six weeks. One call. Then another. Several on the same day. The last had been placed the day she drove to Chicago.
Luca read without touching the phone.
“There are nineteen,” Emily said.
He looked at the screen, then at her.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are. I’m trying to understand what happened, not make you say it again.”
I studied the dates, then the names on the screen. Something in the pattern brought back a memory I hadn’t known was important.
“The night you came to the mansion,” I said.
Emily turned toward me.
“I remember Luca’s phone ringing in the study passage. I was carrying clean napkins. The screen said your name.”
Her face tightened. “You saw it?”
“I saw Vanessa pick it up. She listened, then said, ‘He can’t talk right now.’ She ended the call.”
Luca looked up sharply.
“You saw that?”
“I did. I didn’t understand what it meant then. I thought she was passing along a message, or that you were expecting her to handle your calls.” I pressed my hands together. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner.”
Emily glanced from me to Luca.
“That was the night I drove in,” she said. “I was still on the road. I called to tell Dad I was coming.”
A terrible silence filled the kitchen.
Luca’s face had gone pale. He looked not at me, but at the phone—at all those attempts gathered into one small screen.
“She told me you were busy,” Emily said. “Then when I got there, she told me you didn’t want me.”
“I know,” Luca said. “And I should have known better than to let her answer for me.”
Emily tucked her phone back into her purse.
“Please don’t make promises right now.”
“I won’t.”
“I need you to understand that being sorry doesn’t make me trust you again.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He nodded once. “I’m going to have to show you. And you get to decide whether that’s enough.”
For the first time since the claim had been announced, Emily’s shoulders eased a little. It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t even relief. But Luca had stopped trying to close the distance with promises and left her the space to decide how much to cross.
Mr. Patel opened his folder again.
“I’ll need to review the company’s filing and the disputed authorization. Until we know more, we shouldn’t assume who prepared it or what the missing page proves.”
“Understood,” Luca said.
Emily turned to the window. “I don’t want anyone using Mom’s house as an excuse to tell me what I have to do.”
“No one should,” Patel replied. “It’s your home. You decide who enters and what happens next.”
A light knock sounded at the front door.
Daniel’s voice came from the hall. “Emily, Vanessa is outside. She says she wants to speak with you.”
Luca’s whole body went still.
“Did she say why?” Emily asked.
“She says she can explain the property documents. She asked to speak privately.”
The word privately seemed to change the temperature in the room.
Luca started to rise, but Emily lifted one hand. He stopped.
May you like
She looked at Mr. Patel, then at me. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“I’ll hear what she has to say,” Emily said. “But only if Claire and counsel stay in the room.”
