Chapter 2 - The Price of a Name
By eight, Roman had hired an attorney for Evelyn and instructed the woman to take directions only from her client. By nine, he had learned that paying an invoice did not entitle him to enter a conversation.
He waited outside.
When attorney Mara Chen finally emerged, she carried a yellow pad and the expression of someone unimpressed by expensive suits.
“She wants the workshop protected immediately. She wants her sister's records removed from your household office. And she wants to know whether refusing reconciliation will affect her medical care.”
Roman felt the last question land.
“No.”
“Put that in writing.”
He did.
Mara returned with another page. Independent accommodation. Access to personal earnings. No contact from Claudia, Vanessa, or Gideon. Roman signed every provision, then asked what Evelyn wanted him to do next.
“Bring her sister after school. Mrs. Lind will come too.”
He arranged the visit through the teacher. For once, nobody arrived simply because Roman Ferrara had issued an order.
At noon, Evelyn's surgeon explained that inflammation had made an already narrowed airway more dangerous. The immediate priority was stabilizing her breathing. Definitive surgery would follow when the team considered it safe.
Evelyn listened with her notebook open. She asked about pain, recovery, speaking, and whether she would be able to climb the stairs above the workshop.
She never asked whether Roman would stay.
After the consultation, he placed the brass key beside her water cup.
“Your father's shop is yours. Mara is challenging the mortgage.”
She wrote: You signed it.
“The signature appears to have been copied. I didn't authorize it.”
Her eyes lifted, cautious.
“There will be an independent examination,” he added. “You shouldn't have to trust my word.”
That afternoon, Lily arrived in a school cardigan with one sleeve unraveling. She stopped at the doorway when she saw him.
“Did you make her leave?”
Evelyn reached for her sister, but Lily stood rigid.
Roman rose.
“I didn't know she was leaving. I should have known why she needed to.”
“Mrs. Rossi said Evie was stealing.”
“Your sister was not stealing.”
“Then why did she sell Mom's earrings?”
The room seemed to contract around him.
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Lily finally crossed to the bed. Roman left them together, taking with him a new understanding of every glittering dinner Claudia had hosted downstairs while his wife counted coins above the linen cupboard.
Dante waited near the elevators.
“Gideon used household accounts to intercept her repair payments. Six transfers. He labeled them marriage expenses.”
“Preserve the trail.”
“There's more. Vanessa's rescue story. I found the ambulance log.”
Roman read the copy.
Two patients had been transported from the warehouse before Vanessa arrived. One unidentified male. One woman with smoke inhalation and burns to her left hand.
The woman had declined to give an address until someone assured her that her father would be called.
Arthur Marlowe.
Roman leaned against the wall.
He remembered a voice counting beside his ear. A hand beneath his jaw. Someone telling him to stay awake because she could not pull him any farther.
He had thanked the wrong woman at his father's funeral.
That evening, he asked Evelyn a question he should have asked two years earlier.
“Were you at the warehouse?”
Her pencil remained still for several seconds.
Then she wrote: Dad was delivering the clock. I went to find him.
“And you found me.”
A small nod.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Her face tightened.
I did. At the funeral. Vanessa said the medication confused me. You told me not to upset your mother.
Roman sat down carefully.
May you like
There was nowhere left to place his shame except where it belonged.
Through the glass panel, he could see Lily brushing her sister's hair with extraordinary care. Evelyn winced when the brush caught, and Lily immediately slowed. An eleven year old had learned to notice pain that he had ignored from across his own dining table. Roman stayed outside until the nurse called him back. The next time Evelyn lifted her pencil, he waited without interrupting, although every second gave him another opportunity to imagine an excuse. He had finally begun to understand what his excuses had been protecting for so long.
