The Daughter They Erased Came Back Untouchable novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Only Her First Name
Called out of lunch at the academy, Nerina meets the brothers and sister who erased her and agrees to go home, holding the will that makes her their owner.
Hanna was halfway through her impression of our chemistry teacher when the loudspeaker said my name.
"Nerina. To the headmistress's office, please."
It said only Nerina.
Nobody at the academy had said the other half of my name in four years.
"Ooh," said Hanna. "What did you do?"
"Nothing. I haven't had time."
The other two girls at our table laughed, and Hanna pushed my tray toward me.
I took the stairs slowly.
I wanted to meet what waited at the top on my own feet.
Three people stood in the headmistress's office.
The headmistress stood with them, and she looked at me for a long moment before she stepped out and shut the door.
Ugo was by the desk.
He was twenty-four now and he had our father's shoulders and our father's way of not sitting down.
My second brother leaned on the bookcase with his arms crossed, twenty-one, taller than I remembered.
Fiammetta stood at the window in a gray coat.
She was eighteen.
She did not turn around.
"Nerina," Ugo said. "You've grown."
"Four years will do that."
He nodded as if I had agreed with him.
"We've come to take you home."
I waited for the rest.
"Papa has decided it's been long enough," Ugo said. "He's forgiven you. It's over, all of it. You'll come back and things will go on as they were."
It was a very smooth speech.
He had practiced it.
"Forgiven me," I said.
"Yes."
"For pushing Fiammetta down the stairs."
Nobody had said it aloud in four years, and now it sat in the room with us.
Gaetano shifted against the bookcase.
Ugo's jaw tightened. "We don't need to go through that."
"I was twelve," I said. "Papa carried my trunk to the station himself and kissed my forehead. He said it was for the best. Then he put me on a train, and the school list never showed my surname."
"Nerina," Gaetano said. "Don't start."
"Nobody wrote," I said. "Nobody called. Not once in four years."
Ugo didn't answer.
Gaetano looked at the floor.
Fiammetta's shoulders moved once, very slightly.
She turned from the window.
She was thinner than the photograph I had kept in my head.
Her coat was buttoned to the throat, and at the collar, on a thin chain, hung a small silver medal of Saint Christopher.
It was mine.
I had left it in my bedside drawer the night they drove me to the station.
She saw me looking and closed her hand over it.
"Don't," she said, very quietly, to no one.
Ugo took a folded paper from his jacket and set it on the headmistress's desk.
"Papa has one small thing for you to sign when we get home."
"What is it?"
"A formality."
"Then he can send it here."
"It has to be done in person," Gaetano said. "In the house."
I looked at the three of them.
My brothers had not come in four years.
They had not come at Christmas, or for my birthday, or when the school told them I had been top of my year in every subject.
They came now, three weeks after I turned sixteen.
I did the arithmetic.
"Nonna died in July," I said.
Ugo's face did not change.
"Yes. We're sorry you had to hear it from a stranger."
I said nothing to that.
He wanted to believe I was still twelve, and I let him.
"Pack your things," Gaetano said. "The plane leaves at four."
Behind my brothers, the office door stood open a crack, and I could see Hanna's blond head at the end of the corridor, pretending to read a noticeboard.
I could have said no.
I could have stayed at the academy, where I was safe and nobody threw my name at me.
Then I thought of the stairs in my father's house.
I thought of the girl they said I was.
"All right," I said. "I'll come."
Ugo's shoulders came down.
He had been afraid I would refuse.
Fiammetta looked at me, and for a second her mouth opened to say something that was not Papa's.
Then Ugo touched her elbow, and she shut it again.
I went to my room and packed one bag.
I left the school blazer on the bed, because I would not need a uniform where I was going.
Then I put my hand on the inside pocket of my coat.
A letter lay folded in four.
It had come two weeks ago from a notary in Genoa, and he had told me exactly who would arrive, and why.
My family thought they were bringing home a frightened girl to sign a page.
They did not know that I had already read my grandmother's will.
They did not know I owned fifty-one percent of Falconieri Maritime.
And they were about to put a pen in the hand of the only person who could take it all from them.
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