Chapter 16 - Nora Returns To The Foyer Differently
Three years later, Nora returned to the Moretti mansion carrying a
folder instead of a laundry basket.
She was now an employee-relations specialist for the independent company
managing the estate staff.
Grace was in preschool.
Nathan had rebuilt his own life.
Carlo sent birthday cards with terrible handwriting.
Eleanor Gable’s legal matters had concluded through the appropriate
processes, as had the historical investigation into Thomas’s death.
Nora did not organize her life around those outcomes.
She entered the grand foyer.
Same checkerboard marble.
Same chandeliers.
Same east-wing gallery.
For a second she remembered swollen ankles inside canvas flats.
Eleanor’s fingers digging into her arm.
The words:
Then bleed faster.
Lorenzo walked down the staircase.
He stopped when he saw her.
“Ms. Reed.”
“Mr. Moretti.”
He looked at the folder.
“Am I in trouble?”
“Not yet.”
He laughed.
Nora had come to conduct the annual workplace review.
She was not there because Lorenzo rescued her.
She was there because she had built qualifications after surviving
something that should never have happened.
Before the meeting, she glanced toward the corridor leading to Room 4B.
The door stood open.
Shelves of labeled records were visible inside.
Nothing hidden.
Nobody locked away.
Lorenzo followed her gaze.
“Carlo still hates that room.”
“So do I.”
“Should we close it?”
Nora shook her head.
“No.”
She remembered her father.
Carlo.
Eleanor.
Antonio.
Every person who had confused silence with protection.
“Leave it open.”
Then Nora walked into the meeting.
Three years earlier, she had been terrified that one word would cost her
job, her freedom, and her child’s safety.
May you like
Now her work was making sure nobody in that house ever had to be that
afraid to speak again.
