Chapter 10 - WHAT FIVE MINUTES BECAME
Six months later, Lorenzo Duca learned how to braid hair.
Badly.
This was not a skill anyone in Chicago expected him to acquire.
Sofie demanded it anyway.
“Too bumpy,” she complained, sitting on a stool in my new kitchen while Lorenzo stood behind her holding three sections of dark hair like evidence in a complicated trial.
“I am following instructions.”
“You’re doing them wrong.”
“I have negotiated international shipping contracts.”
“Hair is harder.”
I looked over my coffee cup.
“She’s right.”
He glared at me.
I smiled.
My new apartment was twelve minutes from the Duca estate.
Not on Duca property.
Not owned by a Duca company.
Not paid for by Lorenzo.
Hannah had found it.
Matteo’s trust paid Sofie’s legally approved share of housing costs through an independent fiduciary. I paid mine from my job at Saint Agnes, where I had returned three months earlier as a patient-care coordinator while completing the nursing program I had abandoned after Matteo died.
I had my own lawyer.
My own bank account.
My own key.
Lorenzo had one too.
I had given it to him.
That distinction mattered.
Everything after Vittorio’s arrest had been about distinctions.
Protection versus control.
Family versus ownership.
Power versus responsibility.
Love versus debt.
Vittorio was awaiting trial on federal conspiracy, fraud, obstruction, and homicide-related charges. Paul Sorrento’s death had been reclassified as suspicious after forensic evidence contradicted the original suicide theory, adding another investigation to the pile.
Daniel Keane had agreed to cooperate.
Duca Holdings had undergone the kind of audit that made executives stop sleeping.
Three senior managers resigned.
Two were charged.
Lorenzo closed divisions he could not defend publicly and brought in an outside compliance board that Enzo described as “a collection of professional headaches.”
Lorenzo considered that a compliment.
The newspapers called it a transformation.
They wrote that the feared Duca boss had gone legitimate.
That amused him.
“Legitimate is not a personality,” he said.
“No,” I told him. “But prison is a location.”
He had stared at me for three seconds.
Then laughed.
The first time I met him, laughter looked foreign on his face.
Now Sofie collected it like treasure.
She considered herself personally responsible.
“Done,” Lorenzo announced.
He tied the braid.
Sofie reached behind her head.
One side immediately came loose.
She sighed with the suffering of a disappointed queen.
“You need practice.”
“I was afraid you would say that.”
“Tomorrow.”
He looked at me.
“Save me.”
“No.”
“Disloyal.”
“I learned from your family.”
He put a hand over his heart.
Cruel.
Sofie slid off the stool.
“Benny wants breakfast.”
Benny looked better than any stuffed rabbit had a right to.
A textile conservator from the Art Institute had repaired his seams.
Lorenzo had in fact found the best person in Chicago.
Sofie had asked if the best person in the world was busy.
He told her probably.
She accepted Chicago.
The silver pendant remained with her only on special occasions. Hannah had insisted the original evidence stay secured until the criminal cases finished.
Sofie wore a copy around her neck.
Small wolf.
Three waves.
She knew it belonged to her father.
She also knew her father was dead.
We did not tell her everything.
Four-year-olds deserved truth sized for four-year-old hearts.
Papa loved you.
Papa wanted you.
Papa died because a bad person made a terrible choice.
None of it was your fault.
Adults are handling the rest.
That was enough.
After breakfast, we drove to Saint Michael’s.
It was Matteo’s birthday.
Isabella met us beside the gate carrying sunflowers.
“Not lilies,” Sofie announced.
“Never lilies,” Isabella agreed.
Enzo arrived behind her with two coffees and a bag of pastries.
He had officially retired from Duca security.
Unofficially, he appeared at Lorenzo’s house six days a week and criticized the new security chief.
“Retirement is difficult,” he told me.
“You could try not working.”
“I have heard bad things.”
Teresa came too.
The scar on her forehead had faded to a pale line.
Sofie had given her a medal made from aluminum foil after the break-in.
Teresa kept it in her purse.
We stood around Matteo’s grave.
Not like powerful people.
Not like heirs.
Not like witnesses.
Like a family missing someone.
Sofie placed one sunflower against the stone.
“Hi, Papa.”
My throat tightened.
Lorenzo crouched beside her.
“You know, he hated waking up early.”
“I hate it too.”
“He also hated peas.”
“I hate peas.”
“He cheated at cards.”
“What’s cheated?”
“Something I will explain when you’re older.”
I laughed.
Sofie looked at the photograph set into the memorial stone.
Matteo at twenty-seven.
Smiling.
Always smiling.
“Did he hug good?”
The question broke me.
I looked away.
Lorenzo answered.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I never timed him.”
“Five minutes?”
“Probably.”
She thought about that.
Then she wrapped both arms around Lorenzo’s neck.
He lifted her.
No one counted anymore.
That was the thing about rituals.
They started because something was missing.
Then sometimes they became proof of what had been found.
We returned to my apartment that afternoon.
Isabella took Sofie shopping for birthday shoes.
Enzo and Teresa argued about dinner.
For the first time in months, Lorenzo and I were alone.
He stood near my kitchen window.
“You’re quiet.”
“So are you.”
“I was waiting.”
“For what?”
He looked at me.
Six months earlier, on his terrace, he had told me that if I still wanted to kiss him after I had my own home, my own lawyer, my own life outside his power, I should ask again.
I had not forgotten.
Neither had he.
I walked toward him.
“I have a question.”
His mouth shifted slightly.
“I am listening.”
“Are you still going to make me ask?”
“Yes.”
“That is irritating.”
“Matteo warned you.”
I stopped inches away.
“Lorenzo.”
“Yes?”
“I want to kiss you.”
His expression changed.
All the control.
All the caution.
All the distance he had kept between us for months.
Gone.
“Are you asking?”
“I am.”
His hand touched my face.
Slowly.
Giving me every opportunity to move away.
I did not.
He kissed me.
It was not dramatic.
No thunder.
No gunshots.
No enemies outside.
No child interrupting from a marble hallway.
Just sunlight through a kitchen window.
My hand against his chest.
His thumb near my cheek.
Ordinary.
Matteo’s grandfather had wished Sofie an ordinary life.
I had not understood how precious ordinary could be until then.
When we separated, Lorenzo rested his forehead against mine.
“That took six months.”
“You told me to wait.”
“I regret being decent.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No.”
I smiled.
“You’re still lonely?”
His eyes softened.
“Less.”
The apartment door opened.
We jumped apart like teenagers.
Sofie entered carrying a shoe box.
She looked from me to Lorenzo.
Then narrowed her eyes.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Lorenzo said.
She pointed.
“Your face looks weird.”
“My face always looks like this.”
“No.”
Isabella appeared behind her.
One glance at us and she smiled.
I wanted the floor to open.
Sofie dropped the shoe box.
“Uncle Lorenzo.”
“Yes?”
“Did you hug Mommy?”
He looked at me.
“Something like that.”
Her eyes widened.
“Without me?”
She sounded betrayed.
Lorenzo opened one arm.
“Come here.”
She ran.
I was pulled into the hug with her.
Three people in the middle of my kitchen.
Sofie trapped between us, laughing.
“Five minutes,” she ordered.
Lorenzo looked over her head at me.
I checked the clock.
“Five real minutes.”
He smiled.
“Yes.”
We stayed.
At minute two, Sofie started telling us about the shoes.
At minute three, Lorenzo complained she was standing on his foot.
At minute four, I started laughing so hard I could barely breathe.
At minute five, nobody moved.
Sofie noticed first.
“Time.”
Lorenzo tightened his arm.
“New rule.”
“What rule?”
“We stop counting.”
She considered this.
“Forever?”
His eyes found mine.
“If you want.”
Sofie rested her head against him.
“I want.”
I did too.
But life did not become perfect because a dangerous man learned to hug a child.
Lorenzo still had enemies.
I still woke some nights from dreams about Matteo.
Sofie still asked questions that hurt.
The trials lasted more than a year.
Reporters sometimes waited outside Saint Agnes.
The Duca name opened doors I did not ask to enter and closed others I had not known existed.
Lorenzo and I argued.
Often.
He still tried to solve problems before asking whether I wanted them solved.
I still assumed leaving was safer than relying on anyone.
We disappointed each other.
We apologized.
We learned.
That was the part no dramatic headline would ever understand.
Family was not one brave decision.
It was hundreds of ordinary ones.
Months later, when Vittorio pleaded guilty rather than face a public trial, Lorenzo did not celebrate.
We went to dinner.
Sofie spilled milk.
He cleaned it up.
When the trust board formally seated an independent fiduciary for Sofie’s eighteen-percent interest, Lorenzo voted in favor of limiting his own authority over her shares.
When I graduated from nursing school, he sat in the third row because I told him my mother would have wanted the first two rows for classmates’ families who had traveled farther.
He complained for seventeen minutes.
Then he sat in the third row.
When Sofie started kindergarten, she cried at the gate.
So did Lorenzo.
Secretly.
She told everyone.
And on the first Father’s Day after Matteo’s case finally closed, her teacher sent home a worksheet.
MY FATHER IS...
Sofie stared at it for a long time.
Then she wrote two names.
MATTEO — MY PAPA IN HEAVEN.
LORENZO — MY UNCLE WHO STAYED.
She brought it home and handed it to him.
Lorenzo read it.
Then he sat down.
Sofie climbed into his lap.
“Are you secret crying?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I have allergies.”
“To paper?”
“Yes.”
She accepted this because she loved him.
I stood in the doorway watching them.
Four years earlier, I had believed survival meant making myself and my daughter small enough that dangerous people would never notice us.
I was wrong.
Survival had kept us alive.
But living required something else.
It required being seen by the right people.
Being believed.
Being allowed to choose.
Being held without being owned.
The first time Sofie met Lorenzo Duca, she asked the most feared man in Chicago for five minutes because she wanted to know what having a father felt like.
She never got exactly what she asked for.
Lorenzo never replaced Matteo.
No one could.
He became something different.
An uncle.
A protector who learned to ask before protecting.
A man who let a child climb into his arms without checking the clock.
And eventually, much later, when Sofie was old enough to decide what words meant to her, something closer to a father than either of them had planned.
That first five-minute hug did not give my daughter a father.
It did something stranger.
May you like
It gave a lonely man a reason to become family.
And it gave all three of us permission to stop counting the minutes.
