Chapter 12 - Ledger of the Displaced
The elevator ride down to the subterranean parking garage was entirely silent. Emma stood quietly in the corner, holding her cardboard box of duplicate files, while Luca pressed the remote key fob to unlock his personal sedan. The concrete garage smelled of exhaust fumes and damp pavement—a far cry from the crystal chandeliers upstairs, but down here, things felt real again.
"Get in the car, Mom," Luca said, holding the rear door open. "We're going back to Maple Street."
"I have my own car parked three blocks over, Luca," I said, shifting the wooden spoon to my other hand.
"You're riding with me," he insisted, his tone leaving no room for argument, though the sharp edge of command had softened into something resembling a plea.
I looked at him—really looked at him—taking in the beard, the tattoos, the expensive suit that couldn't quite hide the neighborhood kid he used to be. Slowly, I nodded and slid into the leather backseat. Emma took the front passenger seat, resting the box of ledgers safely in her lap.
The drive across town took twenty minutes through the late-afternoon traffic. Neither of us spoke until the car turned down the familiar, tree-lined avenue of District Four. The autumn leaves were piled against chain-link fences, and the faded pastel paint on the front porches looked tired under the grey sky.
Luca parked right in front of my small, peeling-white house. The final notice notice from Moretti Holdings was still fluttered under the rusted screen door, pinned there by a plastic clothespin.
We got out of the car, the cool evening air biting at our skin. Emma walked up the porch steps first, carefully unclipped the yellow paper notice from the screen, and handed it to Luca without a word. He took it, folded it once between his thumb and forefinger, and slipped it into his inner coat pocket.
"Open the door, Mom," Luca said softly.
I walked up the wooden stairs—the same stairs my husband had built the year Luca was born—and pulled my brass key from my coat pocket. It slid into the lock with a familiar, easy turn that forty years of use had smoothed to perfection. The door swung open, releasing the scent of old cedar, simmering garlic, and stale dust into the evening air.
Inside, the house was exactly as I had left it that morning. The worn floral sofa, the framed photographs of my husband on the mantel, the small kitchen table with the oilcloth cover.
Luca stepped inside behind me, his tall frame almost too big for the narrow hallway. He looked around, his dark eyes tracing the peeling wallpaper in the stairwell and the chipped paint around the baseboards.
"You lived here alone all these years," he murmured, more to himself than to me.
"I didn't live alone, Luca," I said, setting my wooden spoon on the small table by the door. "I lived with memories of a family that used to sit at this table together. Before you decided that building towers was more important than building a home."
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Luca walked into the kitchen, pulling the thick leather binder from his briefcase and placing it squarely in the center of the oilcloth cover. He pulled out a heavy silver pen, unscrewed the cap, and sat down in the wooden chair by the window.
"Show me every name," Luca said, looking up at me with an intensity that burned right through the decades of distance between us. "Every family they pushed out of this block. We're going to deed every single parcel back to the trust before midnight."
