Chapter 11 - GIOVANNI LOST HIS FATHER TWICE
The Moretti records were reviewed independently.
Some conduct was far beyond limitations periods.
Some implicated dead people.
Some still connected to living executives and ongoing financial structures.
The point was not to create instant arrests for twenty-seven-year-old history.
It was to establish what could still be proved.
Giovanni’s reaction was complicated.
Domenico had been dead twelve years.
Yet watching documentary evidence dismantle his father’s mythology felt like another death.
“He taught me loyalty.”
I answered:
“He taught you his version of loyalty.”
Giovanni looked at me.
“Same thing.”
“No.”
That surprised him.
“Loyalty that requires false facts is obedience.”
He almost smiled.
“You really dislike me.”
“I dislike sentences powerful men use when they want complexity to stop.”
Fair.
Then he admitted why he had been looking for Elias so aggressively.
Not only Luca.
Not only family reputation.
Moretti Maritime still contained corporate assets built partly through money diverted during the old scheme.
If the records surfaced, there could be tax, civil, regulatory, and ownership consequences.
“You wanted the ledger so you could control release.”
“Yes.”
“At least you’re consistent.”
He accepted independent review because the alternative was appearing to suppress the same evidence his father suppressed.
Incentives again.
Giovanni did one thing I respected.
He publicly corrected the Moretti family’s claim that Elias Ward stole eleven million dollars.
No heroic speech.
Through counsel.
Records.
Financial corrections.
Elias’s name was no longer attached to theft.
May you like
That mattered.
Even if he was not there to see it.
