Before I Forget His Name novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Repayment, Not a Gift

I stood at the gate until Adriano said my name, quietly, from three steps behind me.

"I'm all right," I said. "I'm only reading."

My father had painted that sign himself, the summer I turned nine.

It was a whole memory, and he wasn't in it.

I went back inside, because there was a desk I wanted to see.

My father's desk was still in the shipping office, under a sheet of plastic and seven years of dust.

I pulled the plastic off and sat down behind it.

Nobody told me I couldn't.

Giulia stood across from me with a leather folder under her arm.

A new brass pin on her lapel read Costanzo Foundation, Counsel.

"The court froze the Donati holdings this morning," she said. "That includes the forged transfer. A judge voided it on sight. Pier Seven is yours again."

"Just like that?"

"It was never theirs. That's the whole case." She opened the folder. "The second paper is harder. Aldo bought up your family's insurance rights five years ago, when the company was drowning. He's been collecting on them ever since."

"On my parents' deaths."

"On the loss of the company that followed them. Yes."

I laid my hand flat on the desk.

The wood was warm from the window, and it had a deep scratch near the corner.

I remembered that scratch from sitting under this desk as a child.

"What happens to the money?"

"The court returns what he took. Most of it."

"And the rest?"

Giulia didn't answer. She looked past me at the door.

Adriano stood there with his hands at his sides and a thick envelope in one of them.

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