Chapter 8: Luca
He flew in from New York on a Thursday.
He worked in finance, Marco had told me.
Had lived in the States since he was twenty-two.
Spoke four languages.
Called his father every Sunday without fail.
I met him at a coffee shop three blocks from Marco's restaurant.
I arrived first and sat facing the door, which I realized afterward was something my mother always did too.
He walked in and I knew him immediately.
Not because he looked like Marco, though he did — the same dark eyes, the same deliberate way of moving.
I knew him because he looked at me the way I had looked at Marco in the restaurant.
That same careful, searching expression.
The face of someone trying to locate themselves in a stranger.
He was forty-six.
I was forty-nine.
Three years.
We shook hands.
"This is strange," he said.
He said it with a kind of directness that I found immediately disarming.
"Very," I agreed.
We ordered coffee.
We sat.
"My father told me everything," he said.
"About your mother.
About what her father did.
About the night at the restaurant." He wrapped his hands around his cup.
"I want you to know — I'm not here to complicate your life.
I don't have any expectations.
I just—" He stopped.
Started again.
"My father spent fifty years carrying this.
I watched him carry it.
I just wanted to meet you."
"I'm glad you did," I said.
And I meant it.
We talked for two hours.
He was funny, which I hadn't expected.
Self-deprecating in a way that felt earned rather than performed.
He asked about my brothers — I had texted Daniel the short version, and Daniel had called me immediately and talked for forty-five minutes without stopping, which was very Daniel.
Paul had gone quiet on the phone in the way Paul always did when something was too large, and then said, "Okay.
Okay.
So what do we do?"
"They sound like good men," Luca said.
"They are.
They're going to want to meet you."
Something in his face shifted.
He covered it quickly, but I caught it.
"I'd like that," he said.
We ordered a second coffee.
Then he said, "Tell me about the estate situation.
My father gave me the broad strokes, but I want to understand."
I told him.
The paralegal.
The letters.
Giuliana's phone call.
The fifty-thousand-euro offer.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.
"Her son," he said.
"The journalist.
Do you know his name?"
"Giuliana mentioned it but I didn't catch it."
Luca pulled out his phone.
Typed something.
Turned the screen toward me.
It was a social media profile.
A man in his mid-forties.
Smiling.
The bio listed him as a freelance journalist and content writer based in Verona.
"I know this man," Luca said.
I looked up.
"Not personally.
But in my industry, you hear things." He put the phone face-down on the table.
"He wrote a piece three years ago about an Italian family's property dispute in Tuscany.
The piece was commissioned by the family that was contesting the will.
It was presented as journalism.
It wasn't."
The coffee shop was warm and bright around us.
Outside, the street was ordinary.
People walking dogs.
A delivery truck idling at the corner.
"So he's done this before," I said.
"He's done this before."
I thought about my mother sitting at her kitchen table, hands around her tea, saying *the old story*.
"She's going to fight," I said.
"Giuliana.
She's not going to take the letters lying down.
She'll find another angle."
"Probably," Luca said.
"But here's the thing about people like Giuliana." He picked up his cup.
"They're used to winning because the other side gives up.
They're not used to an opponent who has nothing left to lose."
I thought about my mother on the phone.
*I was always this person.
I just didn't have anyone to fight for anymore.*
"She's not going to give up," I said.
"No," Luca agreed.
"I didn't think so." He set the cup down.
"I have a friend at a law firm in Milan.
International property, estates, contested wills.
She's very good.
I've already spoken to her."
"You've already—"
"Yesterday." He met my eyes.
"I hope that's all right.
I didn't want to overstep.
But I've been watching my father carry this for thirty years and I would very much like to help, if you'll let me."
I looked at this man who was my brother and wasn't my brother and was somehow both.
"Yes," I said.
"Let's help each other."
His phone buzzed on the table.
He glanced at it.
His expression changed.
"What?" I said.
He turned the phone toward me.
It was a news article.
Posted forty minutes ago.
May you like
The byline was Giuliana's son.
The headline read: *The Illegitimate Daughter: How an American Woman Is Trying to Steal an Italian Family's Heritage.*
