Chapter 6: The Brother He Never Knew
Marco Vela arrived on a Tuesday.
Alessandro had found him through the solicitor in less than a week — a structural engineer living in Lyon, quiet professional life, no social media presence worth noting.
The solicitor had made the initial contact by letter, formal and careful, stating only that the Moretti estate wished to discuss a matter of inheritance and that Marco's attendance was entirely voluntary.
Marco had called the solicitor's office within two hours of receiving the letter.
Now he was standing in the entrance hall of the Moretti mansion, turning his hat in his hands, looking up at the staircase with an expression Alessandro recognized — the particular stillness of someone trying very hard not to show how much something means to them.
He looked like their father.
Not dramatically, not in a way that would have been obvious to a stranger.
But Alessandro had grown up studying that face in photographs.
The set of the jaw.
The way the eyes moved to the ceiling when processing something difficult.
"Mr.
Vela," Alessandro said.
Marco turned.
He was slightly shorter than Alessandro, broader across the shoulders.
He looked at Alessandro the way Alessandro was looking at him — searching, careful, not yet ready to name what he was finding.
"Mr.
Moretti," Marco said.
"Alessandro."
A pause.
"Marco."
They shook hands.
It lasted a moment longer than a formal handshake needed to.
Alessandro led him to the sitting room off the main hall — not the formal reception room, not the study.
The smaller one, with the worn armchairs and the window that looked out over the kitchen garden.
The room his mother had always preferred.
"I want to be straightforward with you," Alessandro said, once they were seated.
"I found out about you ten days ago.
I had no knowledge of your existence before that.
Whatever you were told about this family's position toward you — that was Helena Moretti's position.
Not mine."
Marco looked at his hands.
"She told me there was nothing here for me."
"She told my mother she was d*ad.
She told me my mother was d*ad.
She controlled what everyone in this family knew and didn't know for a very long time." Alessandro paused.
"I'm sorry for what she said to you."
Marco was quiet for a moment.
"I didn't come here for money," he said.
"I want to be clear about that."
"I know."
"The payments — I never asked for those.
My mother accepted them when I was young because she had no choice.
I stopped taking them when I was twenty-three."
"I know that too.
The solicitor found the records."
Marco looked up.
"Then why did you ask me to come?"
Alessandro considered the question.
"Because you're my brother," he said.
"And because our father apparently spent thirty years making sure we would never know each other.
I didn't think that should continue."
Marco looked at him for a long time.
Something moved through his face — not the careful stillness from the entrance hall, but something underneath it, something that had been waiting a long time to be allowed out.
"I used to imagine this conversation," Marco said.
"When I was younger.
I had about fifteen different versions of it."
"How does this one compare?"
"Better," Marco said.
"Considerably better."
Alessandro almost smiled.
The door opened.
Isabella stood in the doorway — upright now, dressed properly, her white hair pinned back.
She had been in the east wing for nine days.
She was eating regularly.
The mark on her wrist was fading.
She moved through the house carefully still, like someone relearning the size of the space available to her, but she moved.
She looked at Marco.
Marco stood up.
Isabella crossed the room slowly.
She stopped in front of him and looked at his face for a long time — the jaw, the eyes, the particular way he held his shoulders.
"You look like him," she said.
Her voice was steady.
"Around the eyes especially."
"I'm sorry," Marco said.
"I don't — I'm not sure what to—"
"Don't apologize." Isabella put her hand briefly on his arm.
"You didn't do anything wrong.
Neither did your mother." She looked at Alessandro.
"Neither did we."
She sat down in the armchair by the window.
"Sit down, Marco," she said.
"I'll ring for tea.
And then I want to hear about your life.
All of it, from the beginning, if you're willing."
Marco sat.
Alessandro watched his mother pour the tea with steady hands, asking Marco questions in a calm, unhurried voice, and thought about how much had been stolen from this room for three years — the conversations, the ordinary afternoons, the simple sound of his mother's voice asking someone about their day.
His phone buzzed on the side table.
He glanced at it.
A message from his solicitor: *Helena's lawyer has made a formal offer.
She wants to negotiate.*
Alessandro turned the phone face-down.
May you like
He looked at his mother and his brother seated across from each other in the afternoon light.
Helena could wait.
