Chapter 2 - THE ONLY NUMBER
Rocco took Jamie directly to a pediatric urgent-care clinic. The bat had not touched him, but the doctor documented a swollen knee from hitting the floor, a scraped palm, and the uncontrollable shaking that returned whenever someone entered the examination room too quickly.
When the nurse asked what had frightened him, Jamie looked at Rocco for permission.
“You can tell her the truth,” Rocco said.
Jamie stared at the paper covering the examination table. “Grandpa hit the table beside my head because I sat in Theo’s chair.”
Theo was Jamie’s eight-year-old cousin, the biological son of Rocco’s younger sister, Bianca. Theo was not even at the barbecue yet. Brandon had objected to Jamie occupying an empty seat because, in his mind, a chair reserved for a biological grandchild was more important than the frightened child already sitting in it.
The nurse asked whether anything similar had happened before.
Jamie hesitated. “Grandpa said Dad would lose the company if he kept choosing me. He said I should ask to live somewhere else before Dad loses everything.”
Rocco felt his stomach tighten. “When did he tell you that?”
“Today. Before you went into the room.”
“Was anyone else there?”
Jamie nodded. “Great-Grandpa Victor.”
“What did Victor say?”
Jamie’s small shoulders rose toward his ears. “He said maybe you needed to learn what choices cost.”
That was why Rocco had given Jamie the emergency handset. He had not believed Brandon would become physically violent. He had expected another cruel remark, perhaps an attempt to exclude Jamie from a photograph or send him to eat with the staff. Rocco had thought a house filled with relatives would prevent anything worse.
He had been wrong, and his mistake had put Jamie within inches of a wooden bat.
Rocco reported the incident before leaving the clinic. He described the slap he had delivered to Brandon without minimizing it and submitted to photographs of his hands. The responding detective told him that defending a child from an armed adult would be evaluated separately from Brandon’s conduct.
By the time they reached home, Rocco’s cousin Mara had sent him a video. She had begun recording after Brandon shoved Jamie’s plate away because she sensed the confrontation was escalating. The footage captured the bat striking the table, Jamie collapsing, Victor watching, and everything that happened after the study door opened.
Rocco preserved the original file and forwarded it to the detective through the secure link he was given.
Jamie slept in Rocco’s bed that night with one hand wrapped around the emergency handset. Rocco remained beside him, fully dressed, listening to every uneven breath.
At 11:18 p.m., Miriam Hale, the family’s estate attorney, called.
“The amendment remains unsigned,” she said. “Victor wants everyone back at the house before midnight.”
“That isn’t happening.”
“The bank’s refinancing condition expires tomorrow. Victor says the company could lose its credit facility.”
“Then Victor should have considered that before watching my father raise a bat over my son.”
Miriam became quiet. “Rocco, there is language in the amendment you have not seen yet.”
“I saw enough.”
“No,” she said. “You need to read Section Fourteen.”
Rocco opened the encrypted copy she sent and searched for the section. Three sentences had been added beneath the succession provisions.
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They defined a family descendant as a person connected exclusively through biological birth.
If Rocco signed, Jamie would legally cease to exist inside the Moretti trust.
