Chapter 27 - THE LETTER LUCA NEVER SENTInside Luca’s notebook, a conservator discovered two pages stuck together.
Between them was a letter.
Addressed to me.
ALESSANDRO.
Thirty-eight years late.
I read it alone first.
Then again with Clara.
Luca wrote that he knew our father expected me to inherit the family.
He knew I admired him.
He knew I copied him.
That frightened him.
One sentence destroyed me.
If I become the reason you stay in this life, then I have failed you.
I stopped.
Clara waited.
I continued.
Luca wanted me to leave with him after the warehouse problem ended.
He had planned to take me to the coast.
Show me the restaurant.
Tell me about Sofia.
Give me a choice.
He never got the chance.
For most of my life, I believed Luca died saving me from a bullet.
Now I understood he had been trying to save me long before that night.
Not my body.
My future.
I visited his grave.
No guards.
No reporters.
Just me.
“I got out,” I told him.
Wind moved through the cemetery.
“Late.”
I smiled.
“But I got out.”
Then I told him about Lily.
Clara.
Poppy House.
The children his forgotten idea had eventually helped.
“I think you would like her.”
I paused.
May you like
“She has terrible respect for authority.”
For some reason, that was when I started crying.
