retaliated with stories about her.
Isabella met Mia.
That mattered more than I expected.
She had recovered enough from her stroke to live mostly independently with support.
Mia called her Nonna Bella after two visits.
Isabella cried.
Then told me:
“Marco would have liked you.”
I did not know what to say.
She continued:
“He needed people who disagreed with him.”
“That sounds like everyone.”
She smiled sadly.
“He avoided the ones who did it well.”
I thought of David.
Maybe Marco’s greatest failure had not been falsifying expenses.
Maybe it had been creating a life where admitting error felt more dangerous than the error itself.
I tried to remember that at work.
Especially when I became a director two years later.
People stopped telling me things.
Not completely.
But enough that I noticed.
The first time an employee said, “I didn’t want to bother you,” I felt cold.
That
