Chapter 3
The council resolution was twelve pages.
Carlo had described it as a temporary measure while Matteo adjusted to life with a newborn.
The language sounded respectful.
Matteo was encouraged to prioritize his wife and son.
Carlo would temporarily absorb operational burdens.
Senior capos would report through him.
Certain legitimate holding-company decisions could be made without waiting for Matteo’s physical presence.
Matteo read the final section.
Then read it again.
“Voting authority.”
Rebecca nodded.
The resolution would have given Carlo power to exercise emergency proxies for several family-controlled entities if Matteo became unavailable for more than seventy-two hours.
Not ownership.
Not permanent succession.
But enough authority to approve refinancing, renew guarantees, move reserves between subsidiaries, and amend certain vendor agreements.
Elena looked at Matteo.
“Were you going to sign?”
“I didn’t know this was in it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He looked at her.
The honest answer was uncomfortable.
“Probably.”
Elena’s face changed.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted two weeks without three-hour council meetings.”
“You almost gave Carlo emergency authority because you wanted paternity leave.”
“When you say it that way—”
“How else should I say it?”
Rebecca interrupted before the argument became its own problem.
“Neither of you wrote this.”
She pointed to the resolution.
“We need to know why Carlo needed it now.”
Matteo called the corporate secretary back.
The man admitted Carlo had been pushing for signatures for ten days.
Carlo claimed lenders wanted proof the company would not become “paralyzed by domestic transition.”
That phrase bothered Elena.
“Domestic transition?”
Rebecca asked.
“The baby?”
Matteo said.
“Or me.”
Elena’s voice was quieter.
Matteo looked at her.
She reached for Luca’s blanket.
“Viola has been saying I’m overwhelmed since the week we came home.”
“You are exhausted.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He did not answer quickly enough.
Elena looked away.
The crack between them became visible.
Matteo had spent six weeks treating Elena’s exhaustion as a private postpartum problem and his family’s pressure as irritating tradition.
Those two assumptions had made each other useful.
Rebecca asked Elena for every message Viola had sent since Luca’s birth.
There were dozens.
Most were ordinary.
Advice.
Food.
Offers to help.
Then the tone shifted.
You should let experienced women make decisions while your hormones settle.
Carlo can relieve Matteo of unnecessary stress until the house is normal again.
A young mother should know when she is too tired to judge clearly.
One message stood out.
Sent four days earlier:
If you continue refusing the continuity papers, people will start asking whether refusal itself proves you’re not thinking clearly.
Rebecca read it twice.
Matteo looked at Elena.
“You never showed me this.”
She stared at him.
“I stopped showing you things after you kept explaining them away.”
He had no defense.
And because he had no defense, the next step became unavoidable.
May you like
They were no longer investigating only what Carlo wanted.
They had to investigate what Carlo and Viola had been trying to make Matteo believe about his own wife.
