Chapter 9 - The Choice That Was Hers
Faith moved back into the Moretti townhouse temporarily.
This time, she chose the room.
She chose the lock.
She kept her own key.
She also kept working.
Francesco hated that part.
He did not say it.
Faith knew anyway.
Mount Sinai increased security.
Agent Park assigned protection.
Leon Briggs joked that Faith had become “the only nurse in Manhattan with a motorcade.”
Faith told him he was exaggerating.
He pointed through the window at Arthur.
“Is that giant man carrying a gun or a baguette?”
Faith laughed for the first time in days.
The threat against her turned out to be Bellini’s mistake.
The photograph contained metadata.
The printer ink matched equipment recovered from a Bellini-controlled office.
The abandoned car connected to one of his shell companies.
The accountant’s testimony filled in the rest.
Luca Bellini was arrested at LaGuardia trying to board a private flight.
Faith watched the news footage from the nurses’ station.
She expected triumph.
Instead, she felt tired.
Dr. Williams stood beside her.
“Disappointed?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I thought justice would feel louder.”
Dr. Williams smiled.
“It usually feels like paperwork.”
Vincent accepted a plea agreement months later.
He would serve prison time.
He was ordered to pay restitution.
Faith received a letter from him through his attorney.
She did not open it.
She handed it to Agent Park.
“Evidence?” Park asked.
“No. Trash.”
Rebecca returned to New York after Bellini’s arrest.
She and Faith met once more.
This time, Rebecca did not apologize.
She said, “I’m starting over.”
Faith nodded.
“Good.”
“I got a job in Newark. Nothing glamorous.”
“Good.”
Rebecca laughed.
“You really like that word.”
“It’s underrated.”
They would never be friends again.
But hatred no longer connected them either.
That felt like freedom.
Francesco’s legal problems were more complicated.
He negotiated with federal prosecutors.
Some businesses were forfeited.
Several associates were charged.
Francesco admitted to financial crimes committed years earlier and agreed to restitution, fines, and cooperation.
He avoided a long prison sentence but received restrictions, probation, and the loss of much of what his family had called an empire.
The newspapers called it the fall of the Moretti dynasty.
Faith called it demolition.
Demolition was not always tragedy.
Sometimes you tore down what could not safely stand.
One evening, she found Francesco in the nearly empty library.
Half the artwork was gone.
Several properties had been sold.
He stood by the window where Faith had once questioned whether his kindness had a price.
“Do you regret it?” she asked.
“Some days.”
She appreciated the honesty.
“What do you miss?”
“The certainty.”
“Of power?”
“Of knowing every door would open.”
Faith smiled.
“Normal people knock.”
“So I’m learning.”
She moved beside him.
“What now?”
“I have legitimate companies left.”
“Very tragic.”
“A hotel group. Two restaurants. A logistics company.”
“Poor man.”
He laughed.
It changed his face.
Faith loved that he could still surprise her.
Then he became serious.
“I want to ask you something.”
Her body tensed.
He noticed.
“No ring.”
She relaxed slightly.
“Good start.”
“I want you to move in with me.”
Faith looked around the townhouse.
“No.”
He blinked.
“Not yet.”
Francesco nodded.
“Fair.”
“My apartment is mine.”
“I know.”
“My job is mine.”
“I know.”
“My life is mine.”
His voice softened.
“I know.”
Faith took his hand.
“But I’d like dinner tomorrow.”
“At my place?”
“Mine.”
His eyebrow rose.
“The tiny apartment?”
“The tiny apartment.”
“What should I bring?”
“Nothing expensive.”
“That is cruel.”
“Dessert.”
“I can manage dessert.”
She kissed him.
Not because he saved her.
Because after saving her, he learned to step back.
Francesco’s cooperation did not happen in one heroic moment.
It happened through weeks of lawyers, sealed rooms, arguments, and documents carried in banker’s boxes.
Faith watched some of it from a distance.
That was another boundary she insisted on.
His legal choices were his.
Her testimony was hers.
They could love each other without becoming each other’s alibis.
When prosecutors announced the first wave of charges against Bellini associates, Faith was in the hospital cafeteria eating yogurt at three in the morning.
She read the headline twice, then went back upstairs because a patient needed help walking to the bathroom.
That was when she understood her life had become larger than the scandal.
Not less important.
Larger.
She was no longer living between crises.
She had mornings, rent, laundry, coworkers, coffee, and the occasional argument with Francesco about whether two bodyguards counted as “discreet.”
Ordinary things had returned.
Faith had never known how precious ordinary could be.
As Bellini’s case moved forward, victims’ families began contacting Faith through the hospital.
She could not answer most questions.
She was not an attorney, investigator, or spokesperson.
But she could listen.
One mother brought a photograph of her son, twenty-nine years old, who had died after receiving a suspect lot in Baltimore.
“I just need someone to tell me he wasn’t a number,” the woman said.
Faith looked at the photograph.
“He wasn’t.”
That conversation stayed with her longer than any headline about organized crime.
It helped shape the patient assistance program she later agreed to advise.
The program offered emergency housing, legal referrals, and short-term financial help to hospital workers in crisis.
Faith insisted on one rule.
“No one receiving help owes us a story.”
The board chair asked why.
Faith answered, “Because desperation should never become entertainment or leverage.”
Francesco heard about the rule and said nothing for a long moment.
Then he smiled.
May you like
“That sounds familiar.”
“It should.”
