He Sent Me Away So I Took His Crown Chapter 08
The next morning, Vittorio called.
After turning seventy-five, he had moved to Sicily, returning to Chicago only when succession disputes or blood feuds required his judgment. Moretti’s daily affairs had been handed over to Luca, but the signet ring symbolizing the patriarch’s authority remained with Vittorio.
When the video connected, he was sitting in a sunlit study, looking far older than I remembered.
“Child.”
Just that one word made my eyes sting.
“I’ve seen the footage from the auction grounds and the hospital report.”
Vittorio paused, his jaw tight with controlled anger.
“I told you then that you did not owe the Moretti family your life. Later, you stayed and saved our racing business, and I still took advantage of your ability, thinking Luca would cherish you.”
“I was wrong about him.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“When you raise an heir who mistakes someone else’s endurance for his right, that is my fault.”
Vittorio did not ask me to show mercy for his grandson.
He told me the decision to terminate the Bellandi partnership had been his. For the past two years, Bellandi’s people had been quietly inflating intermediary fees and selling the customer and bloodline data I had built to a rival underground racing channel. Vittorio’s advisers had already been investigating. What happened to Lark had only prompted him to sign the order early.
“If you want to sell your shares, sell them. If you want to revoke the bloodline authorization, revoke it.”
“If the Moretti racing business cannot survive without you, then it means the business should be paying a price. It does not mean you should have to come back and save it.”
I held the phone, unable to speak for a long time.
All this time, I had been afraid that if I left, I would be betraying the hand that had reached for me when I was sixteen.
But the man who had truly saved me had never intended to lock me into his family with gratitude.
When the call ended, Elias appeared in the doorway.
He asked first, “May I come in?”
Only after I nodded did he place an email from his board on the table.
Reed’s company had originally planned to launch the new registry platform in three days. The board had asked him not to get entangled in Moretti’s internal conflict, at least not until contracts with the three other families had been signed.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“I postponed the launch.”
He sounded calm, resolute.
“If they think rescuing an imprisoned person compromises the system’s neutrality, then they won’t support me the next time I do the right thing, either.”
“You could lose three contracts and a lot of money.”
“Yes.”
He did not say the money didn’t matter.
“So I’ll bear the consequences of that decision myself. I won’t count it as something you owe me.”
That was the first moment I truly saw the difference between him and Luca.
Every time Luca sacrificed me, he said he had no choice.
Elias was the one actually paying a price, yet he never used that price to claim anything from me.