Chapter 17 - Elena’s Last Request
The district attorney found one final file on Elena’s memory card.
A video.
Recorded in the nursery.
Elena sat in the rocking chair wearing jeans and a blue sweater.
Alive.
Rico could barely press play.
“If this is unnecessary, I’m going to feel extremely dramatic.”
Clara smiled through tears.
“Rico, if you are watching this, something went wrong.”
She explained Harbor Meridian again.
Then stopped talking business.
“I need one promise.”
“Do not turn Leo into the reason you keep living.”
Clara felt the line hit him.
“He is your son, not your medicine.”
Elena looked directly into the camera.
“Love him because he is Leo. Not because he is what’s left of me.”
“And don’t become a prison around him because you’re scared.”
Clara looked at the guards outside the nursery.
“I know you. You’ll want six men at preschool.”
Dante whispered from the back:
“Eight.”
Elena’s expression softened.
“Let him have ordinary things.”
Friends you don’t approve of.
A life bigger than our last name.
Then:
“And if someone helps you with him, don’t turn that person into another employee you think you can control.”
Clara slowly looked at Rico.
“I really do know you.”
“I feel attacked.”
“By your dead wife.”
“Apparently.”
Then his expression softened.
“I’ve been doing that.”
“What?”
“Trying to make you permanent because I’m afraid Leo will lose you.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No.”
“So I’m asking differently.”
“Okay.”
“When your contract ends, what do you want?”
“I want to finish the child-development degree I dropped out of.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“Careful.”
“I was going to say I know a scholarship foundation.”
“Anonymous?”
“If you insist.”
“I insist.”
“Of course you do.”
Vittorio had accepted a plea agreement.
The murder case would not go to a full trial.
“What did he admit?”
Dante answered:
“Enough.”
But Rico wanted one specific truth.
“Did he know Leo was in the second car?”
Dante looked at the papers.
“Yes.”
Rico closed his eyes.
May you like
Vittorio had known a three-year-old was nearby.
And continued anyway.
