Chapter 5 - FIVE MINUTES WITH A STRANGER
On the morning Luca Moretti met his daughter, he wore a navy sweater instead of a suit.
He had asked me the night before whether a tie would seem frightening. I told him six-year-olds were more likely to notice a person's shoes than the price of their jacket. He arrived at the family services building in clean sneakers, carrying a paper bag filled with star-shaped pancakes that had come out mostly like crooked flowers.
I wasn't supposed to be part of the meeting. I was there because I had an appointment with Detective Reyes in the same building to clarify my witness statement. Vivian sat beside me in the waiting area, reviewing the notes of my hospital treatment while a radiator clicked beneath the window.
“Remember,” she said, “you are allowed to say you don't recall something.”
“I know.”
“You don't need to make your story sound stronger than it is.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why do you look like you're preparing for a trial?”
“Because everyone keeps looking at me as though I started all this.”
Vivian lowered the folder. “You didn't start it. You discovered it.”
Across the lobby Luca stood beside Rachel Chen, staring at the bag in his hands. It struck me that I had never seen him stand so still. Usually he moved like a man who expected every door to open before he reached it.
Now he was waiting for permission to enter a room.
A social worker came for him. Before he followed her, he looked back at me.
“Star pancakes?” he asked.
I gave him a thumbs-up. “A masterpiece of breakfast engineering.”
The smile he managed was small but real.
I spent the next hour describing the upstairs sitting room, Vanessa's assault, and the handwritten note near the wine. Detective Reyes didn't try to turn my suspicions into facts. She made me walk her through the exact distance between the desk and the cabinet, where the light fell, and why I believed the bottle I saw upstairs was the same bottle served at dinner.
“Do you know whether Vanessa poured anything into the wine?” she asked again.
“No. I only know what I saw beside it.”
“Good. Keep those details separate.”
I asked if they'd identified the substance. She said the toxicology report was being handled by specialists, and she couldn't discuss every finding. What mattered for my statement was that I had consumed wine I suspected was unsafe and needed emergency treatment.
As the interview ended, Rachel appeared in the doorway and asked whether I wanted to wait with her. Luca's meeting was still underway. She looked relieved, which felt like a good sign.
“Is Bella all right?” I asked.
“She's talking,” Rachel said. “That is enough for today.”
Later Luca told me what happened, and I could picture it so clearly that the scene seemed to live in my own memory.
The room had a blue rug, a basket of wooden animals, and a low table covered with markers. Bella sat beside Marisol, wearing a yellow cardigan and shoes with glittering silver stars. She studied Luca for a long minute before speaking.
“You're taller than the photo,” she said.
“I think the photo was taken from too far away.”
She considered this. “Mari says people can look different in pictures.”
“Mari is right.”
“Are you Luca?”
“Yes.”
“Are you my dad?”
Luca had rehearsed a dozen answers. All of them disappeared.
“I believe I am,” he said. “The grown-ups are checking everything so nobody tells you something that isn't true. But I loved you when you were a baby. And I never stopped.”
Bella held her cardigan sleeve between two fingers. “If you loved me, why didn't you come?”
The question nearly broke him.
“I was told you had died,” he said. “That wasn't true. I'm sorry I didn't know where you were.”
“Did you look?”
“I went where they told me you were.”
She thought about that. “Sometimes Mari can't find her keys even when they're in her purse.”
Luca laughed softly, then wiped his eyes. “Something like that. Only much more important.”
Marisol stayed beside Bella the entire time. She did not appear threatened by Luca. She looked exhausted, protective, and deeply sad. Luca thanked her for caring for his daughter. Marisol answered, “I love her. Whatever the papers say, that part is real.”
“I believe you,” Luca said.
Bella eventually opened the paper bag and inspected the pancakes.
“These are not stars,” she announced.
“I've been told my artistic abilities need work.”
“This one is a fish.”
“That was supposed to be the moon.”
“You should practice.”
“I will.”
When the allotted visit ended, she allowed him to take a photograph of the fish-shaped pancake, but she did not hug him. He said he was grateful she'd wanted him in the room for more than five minutes.
We left the building separately. I watched him walk toward his car, the bag hanging empty from his hand. His face looked both brighter and more wounded than before.
That evening, my mother asked me to bring home chicken soup. I stopped at a small grocery store with Vivian and picked up the ingredients. For an hour, ordinary life returned. There were onions to chop, laundry to fold, and a broken kitchen drawer to fix. My mother was delighted to hear Bella had asked for pancakes.
“Children know what matters,” she said. “Food, honesty, and whether someone comes back when they promise.”
I thought of Luca telling Bella he would practice making stars.
A phone call interrupted us. It was Rachel.
“I wanted to make sure you heard this from someone directly involved,” she said. “Initial testing supports that Luca is Bella's biological father. The court will review authenticated results in the proper proceeding.”
I gripped the counter. “So he wasn't mistaken.”
“No. But don't tell anyone outside the legal team yet. There are privacy protections for the child.”
“I understand.”
Rachel paused. “There's something else. The trust company has notified us of an attempted request for control of the beneficiary's assets.”
“Vanessa?”
“A law firm acting for a purported temporary guardian. The signature on that request may have been made by someone using Vanessa's authorization.”
“So they were trying to move the money before anyone confirmed who Bella was?”
“That appears to be the concern. We need the records before drawing conclusions.”
When I relayed only the nonconfidential parts to my mother, she set her spoon down.
“Why would anyone do that to a child?”
“For money.”
“No,” she said. “Money explains what they wanted. It doesn't explain why they could look at her and do it.”
I had no answer.
Two days later, Luca invited me to a meeting with his lawyer and Vivian at a neutral office to discuss compensation for my injuries and my resignation. He didn't argue when I said I wouldn't return to domestic work in his home. He looked disappointed, but not offended.
“You deserve to make that decision without pressure,” he said.
I handed him my resignation letter. “I liked my job before Vanessa turned it into a way to frighten me.”
“I know.”
“I won't stop helping the investigation. But I need a life that doesn't belong to your family.”
He accepted the letter with both hands. “Then I hope we can know each other in some other way someday.”
It was the first time he had said something that sounded almost personal. I didn't answer. He hadn't seen his daughter long enough to learn which stories made her laugh, and I was still learning how to sleep without dreaming about red wine.
There was no room for a love story yet.
Before the meeting ended, Vivian slid a written agreement across the table. The document confirmed that the estate would preserve my job records, pay the wages I'd already earned, and provide insurance information without requiring me to waive any claims. An outside attorney would review the rest. Luca did not ask me to sign anything that afternoon.
“You could make this easier for yourself,” I told him, “by keeping me employed and asking me to stay quiet.”
“I could,” he said. “It would be wrong.”
I studied him for a moment. This was a man whose reputation made people afraid to say no. Yet the most reassuring thing he'd done since the dinner was accept a refusal without turning it into an argument.
“My father used to tell me a favor isn't a favor if it comes with a chain attached,” I said.
“Your father sounds wiser than half the people at my business table.”
“He fixed elevators for thirty years. He knows what happens when a cable isn't allowed to move.”
Luca looked surprised, then laughed. I did too, cautiously, because the stitches near my collarbone still complained. For a few seconds, the room held something ordinary and human, before the case brought us back to the people trying to tear a little girl's life apart.
On the way out, we passed a television showing a local news report. A reporter stood outside the Moretti estate, announcing that a custody dispute involving a powerful Chicago businessman might soon become public.
Rachel muttered something unprintable.
By the time we reached the parking lot, the story had spread online. Commentators were already arguing about Luca's reputation. Someone had leaked an old photograph of his wife Elena and a scanned document claiming he had abandoned his newborn daughter.
The document was dated six years earlier. It bore Luca's signature.
He stared at the image on Rachel's phone.
“That isn't my signature,” he said.
Across the bottom, in smaller print, was the name of the person who supposedly witnessed him sign it.
May you like
TERESA MORETTI.
The aunt who had carried Isabella out of the hospital had helped create a paper trail making her father look like the one who gave her away.
