Chapter 6 - HANNAH REFUSED TO BECOME CLARA
Everyone began comparing Hannah to Clara.
Vincent stopped them.
That surprised her.
One evening Marcus said:
“She has Clara’s courage.”
Vincent answered:
“She has her own.”
Hannah heard.
Good.
Because she was tired of becoming a dead woman’s echo.
Clara had been brave.
Clara had also spent most of Hannah’s childhood afraid.
Moving apartments.
Changing schools.
Checking cars outside grocery stores.
Never explaining why.
Hannah loved her.
She did not want her life.
Vincent understood eventually.
“I keep looking at you and remembering her.”
“I know.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't apologize for memory.”
She looked at him.
“Just don't confuse us.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
Then he asked something no one in the Duca world had asked yet.
“What do you want after this?”
Hannah laughed.
“To stop being in criminal investigations.”
“Ambitious.”
“And hospitality management.”
He frowned.
“You already work hospitality.”
“I carry trays.”
“That is hospitality.”
“That's like saying holding a wrench makes you an engineer.”
Fair.
Hannah had taken community-college courses two years earlier.
Stopped when Clara became sick.
Never returned.
She wanted event operations.
Hotels.
Large venues.
The kind of work where she designed the room instead of disappearing inside it.
Vincent asked:
“Why didn't you go back?”
“Money.”
He said nothing.
Good.
She continued:
“And I got comfortable being unhappy.”
That sentence surprised even her.
Then:
“People think being plus-size is the part of my life I've always wanted to fix.”
Vincent looked at her.
“Is it?”
“No.”
Good answer.
“I'd like managers to stop assuming I'm lazy before I move.”
“Idiots.”
“Very.”
“I'd like airline seats designed by people with human hips.”
He almost smiled.
“And I’d like to finish school.”
“Then do that.”
She laughed.
“With what money?”
He stopped himself.
She saw it.
“Good.”
“This is torture.”
“You’ll survive.”
Then Rachel found something in Lucia’s old papers.
A relocation fund.
Lucia had ordered $75,000 transferred to Clara if anything happened to her.
Purpose:
Emergency relocation and protection for Clara Brooks and dependent child.
Carlo froze it after Lucia’s death.
Then redirected it into one of his shell entities.
Adjusted through recovery and estate claims, Clara’s estate was legally owed substantially more.
Not Vincent’s gift.
Not charity.
Stolen money being returned.
Hannah cried when Rachel explained.
“My mother worked double shifts while this existed?”
“Yes.”
Hannah hated dead men she had never met.
But the recovery meant something practical.
Debt paid.
Savings.
School.
Choice.
She enrolled for the next semester.
Vincent sent one text:
Congratulations.
Nothing else.
May you like
Perfect.
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