Chapter 6 - The Summit Without Him
The Moretti summit resumed without Adrien at noon.
He knew because six different people told him.
Marco's younger brother called. Then Carlo Rinaldi. Then Adrien's cousin Nico sent a photograph of the long walnut table with Adrien's chair empty at the head.
A message followed.
UNCLE V IS SITTING THERE NOW.
Adrien looked at the picture while Sofia slept in the hospital bassinet.
Elena was in the shower. A nurse had finally convinced her to let someone change the sheets.
Marco stood by the window.
"If you don't go back," he said, "they'll vote without you."
"They can vote."
"On the port arrangement?"
"On everything."
Marco turned. "You don't mean that."
Adrien slipped the phone into his pocket.
"Maybe I do."
"Adrien, one night at a hospital doesn't erase fifteen years."
"I'm aware."
"Men depend on you. Families depend on you. Legitimate businesses depend on you. You walk away badly and people don't become free. They become prey."
It was the first useful argument anyone had made to him all morning.
Adrien leaned back in the chair.
"So what do you suggest?"
Marco blinked.
Adrien almost smiled. He could not remember the last time he had asked Marco that without already knowing what answer he wanted.
"Go back," Marco said. "Not to stay. To control the exit."
"Control."
"Fine. Manage it. Whatever word Elena won't hate."
Adrien's mouth twitched.
Then Elena came out of the bathroom wearing hospital socks and a robe, moving slowly.
"What word won't I hate?"
Marco looked suddenly interested in the ceiling.
Adrien answered. "I may need to go to the summit."
Elena stopped.
There it was. The old pattern arriving right on time.
Adrien continued before she could speak.
"Not for the deal. To stop it. And to tell them I'm stepping back until I know who threatened you."
"Stepping back isn't leaving."
"No."
Her eyes narrowed.
He refused to say what she wanted simply because she wanted it.
That would be another form of performance.
"I don't know what leaving looks like yet," he said. "Marco's right about one thing. If I disappear today, people who had nothing to do with any of this get hurt. Drivers. Warehouse crews. Restaurant managers. People whose paychecks come from businesses tied into ours. I built part of that mess. I have to unwind it without pretending I can snap my fingers."
Elena studied him.
"That's the first thing you've said that sounds real."
"High praise."
"Don't get used to it."
He stood.
"Will you be safe here for two hours?"
"I have hospital security, police, and apparently one of your guys pretending to read a newspaper in the lobby."
Adrien glanced at Marco.
Marco shrugged.
Elena noticed.
"I said one man," she told Adrien.
"That is one man."
"And the car outside?"
Marco looked at Adrien with faint admiration.
Adrien sighed. "Two hours. Then I come back."
Elena did not say she believed him.
The summit was held in the private dining room of a closed Italian restaurant in Little Italy, where the Moretti family had been conducting serious conversations since before Adrien was born.
When he walked in, twelve men stopped speaking.
Vittorio sat in Adrien's chair.
He did not stand.
"Nice of you to join us," Vittorio said.
Adrien removed his coat.
"Stay there."
Vittorio's eyebrows rose.
Adrien took the empty chair halfway down the table instead.
That unsettled the room more than if he had thrown his uncle across it.
Carlo Rinaldi cleared his throat. "We need a decision on the eastern route."
"No deal," Adrien said.
Several men started talking at once.
Vittorio lifted a hand.
"You walked out last night," he said. "Now you come back and cancel a six-month negotiation because your girlfriend had a baby?"
Adrien watched him carefully.
"My daughter."
Silence.
Vittorio's face changed by less than a degree.
Enough.
"Congratulations," he said.
"Thank you."
"Was that supposed to mean something?"
"Only if you already knew."
The room tightened.
Vittorio leaned back.
"Careful, nephew."
Adrien reached into his pocket and placed nothing on the table.
No gun. No file. No recording.
Just his hands.
"A man employed by Bellini Produce called Mercy General this morning asking where my newborn daughter had been moved. Police are looking for him."
Vittorio's expression finally broke.
"Police?"
"Yes."
Carlo swore under his breath.
Vittorio stared at Adrien. "You brought police into family business?"
"Somebody brought my child into family business first."
"You don't know Mercer acted for me."
"No. I don't."
That answer surprised everyone.
Adrien continued, "Which is why I'm not accusing you. Yet."
Vittorio pushed back his chair. "This is weakness."
Adrien looked around the table.
"Maybe. But here's what happens next. No new routes. No retaliations. No one touches Bellini, Mercer, Elena, or anyone connected to Mercy General. Anyone who ignores that is acting against me personally."
Vittorio laughed.
"You left your chair. You don't get to issue orders from halfway down the table."
Adrien nodded.
"Then don't treat it as an order. Treat it as the last favor I'm asking before I decide what I'm willing to burn on my way out."
No one laughed.
Adrien stood.
He had been in the room twelve minutes.
Vittorio spoke as he reached the door.
"Salvatore would be ashamed of you."
Adrien turned.
For most of his life, that sentence would have worked.
Now he thought of his father's letter, still unread in his coat.
"Maybe," Adrien said. "But he's not raising my daughter."
Outside the restaurant after the summit, Carlo Rinaldi caught Adrien by the elbow.
"Five minutes."
Adrien almost kept walking. Then he remembered that leaving every conversation unfinished was one reason other men filled the gaps with their own plans.
"Five."
Carlo lit a cigarette under the awning.
"You think the table survives if you leave?"
"I think the table has been surviving men longer than either of us."
"That's not an answer."
"No. It's the only honest one I have."
Carlo studied him, then flicked ash into the rain.
"Your father would've known exactly what to say."
Adrien looked through the glass at Vittorio occupying the head chair.
"My father always knew what to say. That wasn't the same as being right."
Carlo's mouth tightened.
"You're going soft."
Adrien thought of Sofia's fist around his shirt.
May you like
"Maybe."
The answer unsettled Carlo more than a threat would have. Adrien walked away before the five minutes were up, not because he had won anything, but because he had finally stopped treating every accusation as something that required a counterattack.
