Page 14 of My Unexpected Surprise
Nobody who worked with Vaughn Mercer would call him easy. Least of all me, and I respect the hell out of that man.
He demanded more than most because he knew mediocrity was dangerous, and in our profession, danger had a body count.
He was also, and I understood this only later, after I'd built something of my own, quietly, methodically preparing me to leave.
I didn't see it at the time because I thought I was indispensable.
I was good at what I did: crisis logistics, threat assessment, the careful game of human chess where one wrong move could turn a small problem into a catastrophe.
That talent, for me, was a kind of contract, that since I was good with Vaughn, I was meant to remain there.
He disabused me of that notion over a dinner in Prague, three years after Riley.
You've outgrown the role,he said.You need to make your own name.
I told him he was being ridiculous. What's important is that we made a good team.
He looked at me for a long time and said,you're better than I could ever be.
I started Ferretti Global Risk eight months later.
We built it from a small operation with a handful of clients into something that could do what I always believed protection work should do: reach the people who needed it before catastrophe arrived, not after.
Good people should not have to be helpless. That's it. That's the whole philosophy.
The infrastructure, the strategy, the growth…all of it is just how that belief gets translated into action.
I was ten years old when my father was beaten bloody outside our house in Calabria.
He was a man who believed morality was enough to keep danger away, but he ended up on the ground with broken ribs and a battered face for refusing to do what he knew was wrong. The sound of his cries still filters into my dreams to this day.
He was reasonable, hardworking and honest.
None of it was sufficient.
That's why I built Ferretti Global Risk.
To make integrity sufficient.
And whether I like her father or not, I see that same integrity in Livia De Luca.
Chapter Three
LIVIA
I find a quiet corner just past the elevator bank and stop walking.
Just stop. Both feet flat on the marble. Back against the cool wall. Eyes closed.
I breathe in, hold it, and let it out slowly the way the midwife taught me during labor when I was alone and terrified and determined not to let anyone see how terrified I was.
In. Hold. Out.
My hands are trembling.
I don't think anyone can see me right now, but I can feel it in my fingers, that fine motor vibration that happens when your nervous system has absorbed more than it was prepared for in a single morning and is now filing a formal complaint.
The lobby is alive around me. Heels on marble. Murmured conversations. The soft chime of elevator doors.
