Chương 7 - REGINA'S LAST FAVOR
Regina tried to call me a week after the gate incident. She used my old number, then Leah's number, then Mrs. Alvarez's kitchen line, which she'd apparently obtained from a leaked staff contact list. Each time I refused to answer. My silence didn't discourage her. It inspired a different kind of attack.
On Thursday morning, a celebrity gossip account posted a picture of Kian and me leaving Zayn's doctor's appointment. The headline called me a runaway debtor who had moved into a millionaire's home after seducing his grieving son. By lunchtime, strangers were sending me messages that varied from marriage proposals to threats.
"Who writes this?" I demanded, staring at the screen.
"People who know they'll be paid whether they're right or wrong," Mara said. "We're documenting the false factual claims. Don't feed the rest."
A bakery where I'd applied for work withdrew its invitation to interview. Another employer stopped answering emails. I had escaped Regina's apartment and her collectors, but she had found a way to reach into every ordinary place I might go next.
Kian found me in the cottage kitchen, tearing the gossip article into tiny pieces. He didn't say he would ruin the publisher. He made tea, set the cup beside me, and waited.
"I used to have a plan," I told him. "I was going to work in pastry. Eventually rent a small place with a kitchen of my own. All my savings went to hiding. Now nobody wants to hire the woman living in the mafia king's guesthouse."
"I can make introductions," he offered.
"That's exactly the problem. Every door you open looks like another favor I owe you."
He sat across from me. "Then tell me what help doesn't feel like that."
"Let me do it myself. And keep telling me the truth when it affects my safety."
"Fair."
An hour later, Nadia arrived with news that Regina's attorney had requested a meeting. My stepmother was willing to surrender, the attorney claimed, if I agreed not to pursue the missing inheritance. She also wanted a written assurance that Kian would not seek reimbursement for security expenses.
"She's bargaining with things she doesn't own," I said.
"That's your decision to make about any civil claim," Mara replied. "The criminal investigation isn't something she gets to cancel by convincing you to sign a letter."
I asked whether Nadia could arrange a meeting in a controlled environment where Regina couldn't pressure me alone. Nadia warned me that an informal confrontation was rarely as useful as people hoped. She offered a recorded interview through counsel instead, allowing me to provide written questions without being physically present.
I chose the questions.
Why did you forge my signature? What did you take from Dad's house? Who told you Meridian could locate me? And what did Matteo Voss have to do with any of it?
Regina's first answers came back through her attorney, predictably theatrical. She had only done what was necessary. She had been abandoned by creditors. She hadn't intended anyone to frighten me. A second statement, however, admitted she'd copied my driver's-license signature because Tony insisted on a guarantor.
"She thinks saying it was Tony's idea makes it better," I said.
"She may be trying to shift liability," Mara answered. "It still matters that she admitted the act."
Then Regina asked for a call. Not with me. With Kian.
He refused. He wasn't my father, my husband, or the owner of my legal problem. The refusal should have ended it. Instead, Regina sent a voice message to Mara's office, crying so loudly that her words distorted.
"Tell Aurora I kept the blue folder because her father told me not to throw it away. If she makes me go to prison, Tony will burn everything in it. Ask Moretti who signed the fundraiser checks. Ask him what happened to that photographer wife of his."
Kian watched me listen to the recording. His face had gone pale beneath his olive skin.
"Elena's death was a car accident," he said carefully.
"I didn't say it wasn't."
"Regina is trying to turn my grief into leverage."
"Maybe. But my father didn't leave a note naming Matteo for no reason."
He looked away. "I know."
That evening, Zayn discovered I was packing a small overnight bag. I was going to stay with Leah for two days, partly because I missed my friend and partly because I needed to remember who I was outside the Moretti estate. He stood in my doorway clutching his bear.
"Are you leaving forever?" he asked.
"No. I'm visiting Leah."
"People visit and then don't come back sometimes."
I put down the bag and knelt so we were eye level. "I can't promise nothing will ever change. Nobody can. But I can promise I won't disappear without telling you what I can. And I'll call tomorrow."
He considered the distinction with painful seriousness. "Can you pinky promise the call?"
"Absolutely."
When I left, Kian walked me to the car without asking me to reconsider. He looked as if he'd rehearsed a dozen things he wanted to say and rejected them all.
"I'm glad you're going somewhere that feels like yours," he said at last.
"You're getting annoyingly good at letting people leave."
"I'm not enjoying it."
It was a dangerous thing for him to say. For a second, I wanted to step closer. But I had spent too long confusing somebody wanting me with somebody loving me. I needed time to learn the difference.
Leah met me at her apartment with takeout and an offer to destroy the gossip publisher using only strongly worded reviews. We laughed until I cried, then spread my father's old paperwork across her kitchen table.
Under the velvet bag of broken piano keys, I'd found a receipt folded so tightly it looked like an ordinary scrap. It was for a cello repair, signed by Elena Moretti. On the back, Dad had written a storage-box number and a date two days before Elena's accident.
Leah looked at the numbers. "Isn't that the same facility where you kept his workbench?"
"Yes," I whispered. "But I never saw that box."
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We called the facility. The manager found the record after a long silence: the box had been collected six months earlier by a woman carrying a notarized authorization.
The woman was Regina.
