Chapter 15 - The Desperate Call to Italy
The main office of Studio Moretti Restauro Architettonico occupied the piano nobile of a sixteenth-century palazzo near the Piazza Navona.
The ceilings were fifteen feet high, adorned with original frescoes of mythological scenes, illuminated by warm brass downlights that cast a golden glow across long drafting tables made of solid walnut.
Claire Bennett sat at the center table, surrounded by large-format blueprints of the Villa Falconieri’s subterranean cisterns.
Her hair was tied back in a loose, elegant knot. She wore a simple charcoal wool turtleneck and wide-leg trousers, looking every inch the senior architect directing a high-stakes preservation campaign.
Beside her, two junior draftsmen from the University of Rome were listening intently as she sketched a cross-section of the structural vaulting.
“We don't use Portland cement here, Marco,” Claire said in fluid Italian, tapping the drawing with her pencil. “Portland cement traps moisture in historic tuff stone. We use hydraulic lime mortar mixed with pozzolana. That’s how the Romans built the Pantheon, and that’s why it’s still standing while American shopping malls fall apart after thirty years.”
The two young architects nodded vigorously, scribbling notes in their sketchbooks.
Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the office swung open.
Lorenzo Moretti walked in, holding an old-fashioned landline telephone receiver on an extended cord, a look of profound annoyance on his aristocratic face.
“Claire,” Lorenzo called out. “There is an American man screaming at my receptionist. He claims to be your father. He says it is a matter of life and death, and that if we don't put you on the line, he will contact the International Criminal Police Organization.”
The drafting room went quiet. Marco and the other draftsman exchanged nervous glances.
Claire didn't flinch. Her pencil didn't even waver against the heavy paper.
She completed the curve of the vault arch, shaded the cross-hatching on the masonry, and laid the pencil down with absolute calm.
“Give me the receiver, Lorenzo,” Claire said softly.
Lorenzo walked over, his expression concerned. “You don't have to speak to him, Claire. I can have the line disconnected.”
“No,” Claire said, taking the plastic handset. “It’s time to close the account.”
She brought the receiver to her ear.
“Hello, Richard.”
*“Claire!”*
Her father’s voice exploded through the earpiece, but it wasn't the booming, authoritative voice of the man who had shoved a twenty-three-item list into her hands on Christmas Eve. It was cracked, wheezing, breathless—the sound of a man drowning in a storm of his own making.
*“Claire, thank God! Listen to me! You have to retract those filings with the licensing board! The Attorney General’s investigators were here! They seized the servers! They’re threatening to file federal wire fraud charges because of the Radnor library contract!”*
Claire looked out the tall arched windows of the palazzo. Outside, rain was falling softly over the cobblestones of Rome, washing the ancient stone clean.
“The Radnor contract was based on forged credentials, Richard,” Claire said, her voice cool, even, entirely devoid of malice or fear. “You committed wire fraud when you submitted my architectural stamp without my knowledge or consent. That is between you and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
*“I’m your father!”* Richard shrieked, his voice breaking into a desperate sob. *“I gave you life! I fed you! I put clothes on your back! You owe me your allegiance!”*
“I gave you nine years of unpaid labor, Richard,” Claire replied. “I gave you the designs that kept your firm afloat while you told the country club you were an architectural genius. I paid your second mortgage. I cleaned your house. I brined your turkeys. My debt to you—if it ever existed—was paid in full a long time ago.”
*“Evan is ruined!”* Richard wept. *“He’s locked in his room! Melissa left him! Kane & Vance fired him! He has no money, Claire! No one will hire him! Do you want your brother to starve in the street?”*
“Evan is a twenty-eight-year-old man with an Ivy League degree,” Claire said. “He can do what you always told me to do: pull himself up by his bootstraps and work forty hours a week. Perhaps he can find a job as an administrative assistant. I hear the entry-level salary is very humbling.”
*“Claire, please!”* Richard was begging now, openly weeping into the receiver. *“They’re going to take the house! The bank is foreclosing! Linda left me! She went to Ohio! I have nothing left, Claire! Nothing!”*
Claire paused for a brief moment.
She remembered the feeling of standing in the kitchen on Christmas Eve, looking down at the twenty-three chores, realizing with absolute, terrifying clarity that if she stayed, she would spend the rest of her life being ground into dust to feed the egos of three people who didn't even know her favorite color.
“Richard,” Claire said softly.
*“Yes? Yes, darling? You’ll help?”*
“Item twenty-three on your list,” Claire said, her voice dropping into a whisper that carried the finality of a tombstone settling into earth. “*‘Clean the kitchen floor before the guests arrive.’*”
Richard went dead silent on the other end of the line.
“You have a lot of cleaning to do, Richard,” Claire said. “I suggest you start now.”
She pulled the receiver away from her ear and set it gently back onto the cradle, cutting the connection with a soft, final *click*.
She looked up at Lorenzo, who was watching her with a look of fierce, quiet pride.
May you like
“Where were we?” Claire asked, picking up her pencil. “Ah, yes. The drainage culverts on the lower terrace.”
***