Chapter 4 - What Teresa Paid For
The check did not prove what Marco thought it proved.
But Domenico could not explain that without reopening something he and Teresa had agreed to keep private nearly three decades earlier.
That agreement now felt like a mistake.
Camilla stood across from his desk waiting.
“You remember it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then tell me what it was.”
Domenico looked at the office door.
“Not here.”
“Dad, please don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Decide what I can handle.”
The words landed harder than he expected.
Teresa had said something similar to him years ago, though under very different circumstances.
He sat down.
“The check was part of a series.”
Camilla’s expression changed.
“How many?”
“Twelve.”
“Mom paid Gina every month for a year?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That is something Gina should have had a say in telling Marco.”
Camilla laughed once, bitterly.
“You’re still protecting everyone except me.”
Domenico did not have an answer to that.
So instead of defending himself, he called Gina.
She lived thirty minutes away in Parsippany and worked part-time at a dental office despite being sixty-three and technically retired.
She answered cheerfully.
That changed as soon as Domenico said Anthony’s name.
“Why are you asking me about that?”
“Because Marco is using old payments from Teresa to justify taking money from my company.”
Silence.
Then: “What?”
Domenico explained only the essential facts.
The inflated invoices.
Camilla’s approvals.
The envelope.
At the word envelope, Gina inhaled sharply.
Domenico noticed.
“So you know about it too.”
“I know Teresa kept papers.”
“What papers?”
“I don’t know what she put in there.”
“Gina.”
“I’m serious.”
“Did Teresa pay you twenty-four hundred dollars a month after Anthony left?”
Another silence.
“Yes.”
“Was that money because I owed Anthony sixty thousand dollars?”
“No.”
Domenico closed his eyes briefly.
Across the desk, Camilla heard the answer.
Her shoulders dropped.
But Gina continued.
“Don’t make that mean what you want it to mean either.”
Domenico opened his eyes.
“What does that mean?”
“Anthony did put money into your business.”
“I know.”
“And you know what he told Marco.”
“I’m learning.”
“He spent years telling that boy you took everything from him.”
“Why didn’t you correct him?”
Gina’s voice became quieter.
“Because by the time Marco was old enough to understand any of it, Anthony and I were trying to keep him from understanding a lot of things.”
Domenico looked at Camilla.
She was listening now with the same frightened concentration she had shown toward the envelope.
“Come to my house tonight,” Domenico said.
“No.”
“Gina.”
“No. I’m not sitting in front of Marco and humiliating his father after the man’s been dead nine years.”
“He is using that story to justify taking money.”
“I heard you.”
“Then help me stop it.”
Gina did not answer immediately.
When she finally spoke, her voice was strained.
“I’ll talk to Camilla.”
“Why Camilla?”
“Because she’s the one still thinking she can save everybody.”
Camilla looked away.
Gina added, “And because Marco won’t listen to me if you’re in the room.”
The call ended with an agreement for Camilla to meet her that evening.
Domenico wanted to object.
He didn’t.
That was the first active decision he made differently from the man he had been twenty-nine years earlier.
Back then, he and Teresa had believed adults could protect children by burying ugly truths.
Now one of those children was thirty-one years old and apparently stealing money in defense of a lie.
Before Camilla left, Domenico unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk.
He removed an old accordion file marked 1997–1999.
“I haven’t looked at this in years,” he said.
Inside were tax returns, loan statements, incorporation papers, equipment leases, and payroll records from the company’s first two years.
They worked through them together.
Near the back, Camilla found Anthony Bellini’s name.
Not as an owner.
As a lender.
Sixty thousand dollars.
Her finger stopped on the page.
“Dad.”
“I told you he helped me.”
“This says the loan term was eighteen months.”
“Yes.”
“Was it repaid?”
“It was supposed to be.”
“Supposed to be?”
Domenico looked at the old file.
May you like
The repayment ledger that should have followed was missing.
And for the first time, he realized he could no longer prove his own version of the story without the envelope his wife had hidden.
