Chapter 13 - The Truth About the Forty-Seven Calls|
The following morning, I received a message from Dante's security chief, Rocco Bellini.
He had worked for the family for more than twenty years. He had been at our wedding, stood outside the hospital when Lucy had her appendix removed, and once driven through a snowstorm to bring Elena medication.
He wasn't a friend in the ordinary sense. His loyalty was to the family, and I had never questioned what that meant.
His message was brief.
Mrs. Morty, there is something you should know about the forty-seven calls.
I asked whether he could meet me at Margaret's office.
He agreed.
Rocco arrived carrying a tablet. He looked uncomfortable, which was unusual for a man who could stand beside Dante during confrontations without blinking.
“Mr. Morty asked us to locate you that morning,” he said.
“I know. A vehicle was parked outside Elena's house.”
“That was one of our cars.”
“Why?”
“He was concerned that you might have gone somewhere unsafe.”
“Did he tell you that before or after he accused me of embarrassing him?”
Rocco didn't answer.
He opened the call log.
“The first eleven calls came from Mr. Morty. The next fourteen were made by the house manager, the event coordinator, and two members of his office. The rest were from family contacts and staff trying to confirm the birthday arrangements.”
I stared at the screen.
“So not all forty-seven were from him.”
“No. But Mr. Morty initiated the search.”
“Why was he so desperate to reach me?”
Rocco hesitated.
“Because he couldn't find the final event documents.”
I felt something inside me go very still.
“What documents?”
“The vendor contracts, the seating chart, the transport schedule, the emergency contact list, and the final payment approvals. They were all stored in the event folder you maintained.”
“I sent him copies.”
“He couldn't locate them.”
“Then he should have searched his email.”
“He did. But some of the documents were attached to threads he hadn't read. Others were in the shared drive under your personal organization system.”
I almost laughed.
For thirteen years, Dante had relied on me to know where everything was. He had never needed to learn the details because I had always been there to supply them.
The moment I stopped doing the work, he discovered how much of his life depended on labor he barely noticed.
“Did the event fail?” I asked.
“No. Mrs. Elena's birthday went well. But the payment issue created a problem, and Mr. Morty was worried that the company records might be exposed.”
“Exposed to whom?”
“His accountants. The bank. Anyone asking why the payment came from Northstar.”
I looked at Rocco.
“So the calls weren't about whether I was safe. They were about what I had stopped managing.”
He lowered his eyes.
“Partly.”
“Was he worried about me at all?”
Rocco took a long time to answer.
“I believe he was. But he was also worried about the consequences of your leaving.”
That was the most honest thing anyone from Dante's organization had said to me.
I thanked Rocco and asked him to preserve the call records for Margaret. He agreed.
After he left, I sat alone in the office.
The screenshot of forty-seven missed calls had once seemed like proof that Dante couldn't bear to lose me. Now I understood that panic could come from many things: fear of abandonment, fear of exposure, fear of losing control.
Love might have been among them.
But I could no longer accept panic as a substitute for care.
That afternoon, Lucy came to visit. She had been thinking about the family business and wanted to understand why my name appeared on a company she had never heard of.
I showed her only the documents Margaret had approved for sharing.
She read them quietly.
“Dad really knew about this?”
“We have evidence that he knew the company existed and that transactions were happening. We are still establishing exactly what he knew about the signatures and where the money went.”
Lucy rubbed her forehead.
“He always told me that everything he did was to protect us.”
“Sometimes people use protection to justify choices they don't want to explain.”
She looked at me.
“Did he ever love you?”
The question broke my heart because I knew she wasn't asking about a technicality.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe he did.”
“Then how could he do this?”
“Love doesn't automatically make someone honest, kind, or fair. Those are choices too.”
Lucy nodded, tears in her eyes.
“I don't want to become like him.”
“You don't have to become anyone but yourself.”
She hugged me before leaving.
Later that night, Margaret called.
The financial review had uncovered a second account connected to Northstar. It had received payments from a company associated with one of Dante's criminal rivals.
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The amounts were too large to dismiss as routine consulting fees.
And the transfer instructions had been approved by Dante himself.
