Chapter 18 - SIX WEEKS
Exactly six months after I arrived eighteen minutes late, Margaret handed me an envelope at breakfast.
I stared.
“I have trauma associated with envelopes.”
“This one is safe.”
Inside was my original application.
Coffee stain.
Wrinkled corner.
Twenty-three pages.
“You kept this?”
“Luca did.”
I looked across the room.
He was pretending to read the newspaper.
“You kept my résumé?”
“No.”
“Margaret just betrayed you.”
Margaret walked away smiling.
I approached him.
“Sentimental.”
“Evidence.”
“Of?”
“Poor hiring judgment.”
I sat opposite him.
By then, many things had changed.
I no longer wore the maid uniform.
Not because I disliked it.
Because my role now involved managing staff, vendors, schedules, property operations, and foundation projects.
I finished my degree remotely.
Luca had offered to pay tuition.
I refused.
He argued.
We compromised.
The Marco Moretti Foundation offered me a scholarship using the same anonymous committee process as everyone else.
I nearly rejected that too.
Mom told me not to be stupid.
Mothers remained undefeated.
Adrian became temporary CEO of the legitimate Moretti companies.
He spent half his time repairing the damage his father caused and the other half complaining about Luca.
Daniel awaited sentencing.
His cooperation had exposed decades of fraud.
Whether guilt had motivated him or fear, nobody could know.
Matteo’s trial continued.
Marco’s case finally received a corrected public record.
For Luca, that mattered more than punishment.
One evening I found him standing beside Marco’s photograph.
“Good day or bad day?”
“Both.”
“Those exist.”
He handed me an official document.
The investigation concluded that Marco’s death had been connected to efforts to conceal Crown activity.
There it was.
Sixteen years.
Finally written.
Not rumor.
Not suspicion.
Truth.
Luca breathed slowly.
“I thought this would feel different.”
“How?”
“Like winning.”
“Grief doesn’t have winners.”
He looked at me.
“When did you become wise?”
“Hospital vending machines.”
He smiled.
We walked outside.
The gates were open.
They stayed open during daylight now.
A small change.
Huge meaning.
“Do you regret hiring me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I hit his arm.
He caught my hand.
“No.”
His voice softened.
“I regret what it cost you.”
“It gave me things too.”
“Federal questioning?”
“Great networking opportunity.”
“Claire.”
I laughed.
Then became serious.
“It gave me a life where I’m not constantly surviving.”
His thumb moved over my fingers.
“That was you.”
“Not completely.”
The old me would have argued.
But accepting help was something I had learned too.
Not all dependence was weakness.
Not every gift became a debt.
Not every powerful man was my father.
Trust could be chosen carefully.
That mattered.
“Your six weeks ended a long time ago,” Luca said.
“I noticed.”
“You stayed.”
“So did you.”
“What does that mean?”
“The version of you who lived here when I arrived is gone.”
He looked back toward the mansion.
“Good.”
I squeezed his hand.
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“You’re still terrible at breakfast.”
“I eat breakfast.”
“Espresso is not food.”
“Italian law disagrees.”
We walked toward the garden.
Luca stopped near the fountain.
“There’s something I need to ask.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“If this is about changing my title again—”
“It isn’t.”
He reached into his jacket.
My brain stopped.
“Luca.”
He pulled out—
A key.
I stared.
“That was dramatic for a key.”
His eyebrows rose.
“What were you expecting?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
I took it.
“What does it open?”
“The apartment downtown.”
I looked at him.
He had purchased an apartment months earlier while restructuring his life away from the mansion.
“You want me to move in?”
“No.”
I blinked.
He continued.
“I want you to have a key.”
“That sounds suspiciously like half a proposal.”
“It isn’t.”
“Good.”
His expression shifted.
“Unless you want it to be.”
Now my brain genuinely stopped.
I looked at him.
Luca Moretti.
The man half Chicago feared.
Standing by a fountain looking less certain than he had while facing federal investigators.
I smiled.
“Ask me properly someday.”
His shoulders relaxed.
“Someday?”
“Yes.”
“How far away is someday?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“How patient you are.”
He looked offended.
“You showed up eighteen minutes late.”
“And you’ve held it against me for six months.”
“Correct.”
“Then you can wait.”
I kissed him.
This time not on the cheek.
When we separated, I whispered:
“You’re getting better at surviving uncertainty.”
“I hate it.”
“I know.”
And that might have been the moment I realized our happy ending wasn’t the disappearance of danger.
Life never promised that.
It was the discovery that neither of us had to face uncertainty alone.
May you like
But Luca still had one question left.
And three months later, he chose the most ridiculous possible way to ask it.
