Chapter 8 - THE MAN AT TABLE SIX
His name was Gabriel Moretti.
For six years, I had served him eggs.
That fact bothered me more than it should have.
Sunday mornings.
Black coffee.
Rye toast.
No jelly.
He tipped exactly twenty percent.
Apparently evil could be punctual.
Adrian moved in front of me.
Gabriel laughed.
“Still protective.”
“What do you want?” Adrian asked.
“What I've always wanted.”
“The company?”
“Control.”
At least he was honest.
Detective Harris entered from the rear aisle with two officers.
Gabriel raised his hands calmly.
“No need for theater.”
“You're under arrest,” Harris said.
“For attending church?”
“For questioning.”
Gabriel smiled.
“Then ask.”
It turned out arresting Gabriel was more complicated than expected.
He had spent twenty years using another identity.
No active warrant.
No direct evidence yet connecting him to my mother's death.
The audio implicated Vincent.
Teresa implicated Gabriel.
But witnesses weren't convictions.
Gabriel walked out after six hours.
Before leaving, he looked at me.
“Your mother was stubborn too.”
I met his eyes.
“Good.”
He smiled.
That was the moment I stopped being afraid of him.
Not because he wasn't dangerous.
Because fear had stopped being useful.
The shareholder meeting was scheduled for Friday.
Until then, Adrian insisted I remain somewhere secure.
We compromised on a furnished apartment owned by Marisol's cousin.
No Moretti property.
No hotel.
Adrian paid for nothing.
He hated that last part.
I enjoyed it enormously.
On Wednesday evening, he arrived carrying pizza.
“Did you poison this?”
“Yes. Extremely slowly. With cholesterol.”
I laughed.
We ate sitting on the floor because the apartment had one tiny table occupied by legal documents.
For an hour, we discussed nothing about murder.
I learned Adrian secretly watched terrible reality television.
He learned I hated olives.
“You've been removing them from your slice for five minutes,” he said.
“They contaminate neighboring cheese.”
“That is scientifically absurd.”
“You own twelve restaurants. Your opinion is compromised.”
There it was again.
Normal.
I had forgotten normal could feel luxurious.
After dinner, he became quiet.
“What?”
He looked at my lip.
The cut had almost healed.
“Nothing.”
“Adrian.”
“The first night at the diner…”
“What about it?”
“I wanted to hurt him.”
“Tommy?”
“Yes.”
I waited.
“I didn't because I saw how afraid you were.”
“Of Tommy?”
“Of everyone deciding things for you.”
That surprised me.
“I've done bad things, Claire.”
“I assumed.”
He smiled slightly.
“I grew up believing fear was respect.”
“It's not.”
“No.”
“How did you learn?”
“My father.”
“The same father who disappeared?”
“Before that.”
Adrian looked at the city lights.
“He once fired a man for stealing.”
“Reasonable.”
“Then the man's daughter came to our house.”
“What happened?”
“She was fourteen. She asked my father how her little brother was supposed to eat.”
I said nothing.
“My father discovered the man had stolen groceries from a warehouse, not cash.”
“What did he do?”
“Rehired him.”
Adrian smiled faintly.
“Then made him repay the groceries at five dollars per paycheck because my father was incapable of generosity without paperwork.”
I laughed.
Adrian's expression softened.
“He told me power is measured by what you can destroy, but character is measured by what you choose not to.”
“Did he live by that?”
“Not always.”
“Maybe nobody does perfectly.”
Our eyes met.
Something shifted.
He leaned slightly closer.
Then stopped.
“May I?”
The question nearly undid me.
Nobody had asked Tommy.
Not about kisses.
Not about money.
Not about my phone.
Not about anything.
I whispered, “Yes.”
Adrian kissed me gently.
Once.
No pressure.
No possession.
When he pulled away, I was crying.
His face immediately changed.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
I laughed through the tears.
“You asked.”
He understood.
The second kiss was mine.
For one night, the world became small.
Pizza boxes.
Rain against glass.
A man who waited when I needed time.
The next morning ruined everything.
The New York Sentinel published a front-page story.
WAITRESS SEDUCES MORETTI CEO BEFORE $42M SHARE VOTE
Photographs showed Adrian entering my building.
Another showed us through the apartment window.
Someone had been watching.
The article accused me of manipulating him.
Vincent went on television claiming Adrian had exploited “a vulnerable abuse survivor.”
I threw my phone across the couch.
“This is disgusting.”
Adrian's attorney nodded.
“That is the point.”
“What happens now?”
“If you vote with Adrian tomorrow, Vincent will claim the vote was influenced.”
“So?”
“So shareholders may demand an ethics investigation.”
I looked at Adrian.
“What do you want me to do?”
His answer came immediately.
“Whatever you want.”
I believed him.
That mattered more than the vote.
At noon, I held a press conference.
Adrian asked me not to.
I did it anyway.
Cameras packed the sidewalk outside Moretti Development.
I stepped to the microphones.
“My name is Claire Bennett. A week ago, most of you would not have considered me interesting enough to photograph.”
Silence.
“I served coffee. I counted quarters before buying laundry detergent. I lived with a man who taught me to confuse control with love.”
Reporters stopped typing quite so loudly.
“Now people have discovered I own valuable shares, and suddenly everyone wants to explain my own decisions to me.”
I looked directly into the cameras.
“So here's one decision nobody gets to rewrite.”
I held up a document.
“I will not transfer my voting rights to Adrian Moretti.”
A murmur erupted.
Adrian's face changed.
Neither had we discussed this.
“And I will not transfer them to Vincent Moretti.”
More noise.
“Instead, tomorrow I will propose an independent trust giving employee representatives and tenants from Moretti-owned residential properties oversight rights on redevelopment projects.”
The reporters went silent.
Even Adrian looked stunned.
“My mother died because powerful people believed ordinary families were numbers on paper.”
I swallowed.
“She left me money.”
I lowered the document.
“But she also left me a choice about what kind of person I become after getting it.”
Questions exploded.
I walked away.
Adrian followed me inside.
“That was…”
“Terrible?”
“Annoyingly impressive.”
I smiled.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
His expression turned cold.
“What happened?”
He lowered the phone.
“Vincent's gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Nobody knows.”
Another phone rang.
Mine.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Vincent's voice whispered—
May you like
“If you want your Aunt Rebecca alive, come to the old Forty-Seventh Street site alone.”
Then the line died.
