Chapter 9 - THE MAID WHO WALKED AWAY
Alessia left the estate on a Thursday morning.
This time, she packed her own suitcase.
Dante found her standing beside the front door.
For one terrible moment, he thought history was repeating itself.
"Alessia?"
She looked at him.
"I'm leaving."
He stopped.
"Why?"
"Because I need to remember who I am outside this house."
He studied her.
For weeks, they had worked together.
Read documents.
Interviewed witnesses.
Discovered painful truths.
And slowly, without either of them intending it, something had changed.
Dante had begun looking for her at breakfast.
Asking whether she'd eaten.
Listening when she disagreed with him.
Alessia had begun noticing how he carried grief behind his composure.
How he visited Maria's old room when he thought nobody was watching.
How he had started thanking employees instead of issuing silent instructions.
But the house remained his.
And she remained on the payroll.
That imbalance mattered.
"I don't want people thinking I'm staying because you've decided I'm special," she said.
Dante looked down.
"I never wanted you to feel trapped."
"I know."
"Then what do you want?"
She smiled sadly.
"My own life."
He nodded slowly.
"Then you should have it."
---
Dante arranged for all outstanding wages owed to Alessia to be paid.
He also approved compensation for the improper treatment she had experienced, subject to independent legal review.
She accepted what she was legally owed.
Nothing more.
When he offered to help with an apartment, she refused.
"I can find one myself."
He smiled faintly.
"I expected that answer."
She lifted the suitcase.
Then paused.
"Mr. Moretti?"
"Dante."
She looked at him.
"What?"
"When you're not working here, you can call me Dante."
Her heart tightened.
She hesitated.
Then whispered, "Goodbye, Dante."
He nodded.
"Goodbye, Alessia."
She walked outside.
No security guards followed.
No one tried to stop her.
For the first time in seven months, she crossed the Moretti gates because she chose to.
---
Alessia rented a modest apartment near her brother's college.
Nico helped carry her boxes.
He looked around.
"Not bad."
"The kitchen is tiny."
"Mom would've liked it."
Alessia smiled.
Their mother had died when Nico was fourteen.
Their father had followed two years later.
Alessia had spent much of her adult life making sure her brother could continue school.
Now she was twenty-eight.
And for the first time, she wanted something beyond survival.
---
She found work at a restoration company.
Her experience helping her father impressed the owner, a woman named Margaret Sullivan.
Within weeks, Alessia was assisting with historic building assessments.
She loved it.
Old staircases.
Hidden panels.
Original woodwork.
Structures that carried stories inside their walls.
One afternoon, Margaret handed her a file.
"We're bidding on an old industrial property near Riverside."
Alessia opened the folder.
Her stomach dropped.
The building belonged to a company once controlled by Bellini.
And its original renovation contractor was listed as:
ROMANO RESTORATION SERVICES.
Her father's company.
She stared.
Margaret noticed.
"Something wrong?"
Alessia shook her head.
"I need to make a call."
---
That evening, she contacted Sarah Whitcomb.
"My father worked on one of the Riverside buildings."
Sarah was silent.
"Are you certain?"
"His company name is on the construction records."
A pause.
"Alessia, I think you need to see something."
Sarah sent a scanned document.
It was a contractor's complaint filed eight years earlier.
The complainant was Alessia's father.
He had reported suspicious alterations to a building's financial records storage area.
He also claimed that he had been pressured to conceal a hidden compartment.
The complaint had been marked resolved.
But the resolution signature did not belong to her father.
Alessia recognized his handwriting immediately.
Someone had forged it.
She sat on the floor.
For years, she had believed her father lost his business because of bad contracts and mounting medical expenses.
Now she wondered whether someone had deliberately ruined him.
May you like
And whether her employment at the Moretti estate had been coincidence at all.
---
