“You told her?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She doesn’t trust you.”
“Good.”
Marco raised an eyebrow.
“Good?”
“Yes.”
“You’re okay with that?”
“I’d be more concerned if she trusted me after one week.”
Marco leaned against the desk.
“Why are you doing this?”
Lorenzo looked at him.
“Because nobody helped my mother when I was a child.”
Marco’s expression softened.
“You never told me that.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
But there was.
A memory he hadn’t spoken about in decades.
A cold apartment.
An empty refrigerator.
His younger sister crying.
His mother pretending she wasn’t hungry.
And Lorenzo, at eleven years old, promising his sister that dinner was coming.
It hadn’t.
Nobody came.
He had never forgotten that night.
Maybe that was why a twelve-year-old asking for milk had reached somewhere inside him that violence, money, and power never could.
Marco nodded slowly.
