Chapter 6 Chapter six
"Il forum dove parli della Corona?" The forum where you speak about the Crown?
"Sì."
She was quiet for a moment, then reached across the table and took my hand. "Stai attento, tesoro." Be careful, darling. "Quelle persone hanno potere. Possono farti del male." Those people have power. They can hurt you.
"Lo so, Mamma." I know.
"Tuo padre..." She stopped, started again in careful English. "Your father would be proud. Of your research. Of speaking truth. But he would also want you safe."
"I'll be careful. I promise."
She studied my face, her thumb rubbing circles on the back of my hand the way she had when I was small. "You work too much. Sleep too little. When does it end, Devlin?"
She only used my full name when she was really worried.
"Soon," I said. "Once I defend the dissertation, once I get the postdoc position, things will be better. I promise."
"And Marco? Giulia? You cannot carry us all forever."
"I'm not carrying anyone. We're family. We take care of each other."
"Taking care and sacrificing yourself, not same thing." She squeezed my hand. "I worry. You are so much like your father. So proud. So stubborn. So determined to do everything alone."
"I'm not alone. I have you. Giulia. Marco."
"And when you have girlfriend? Wife? Bambini? Will you have room for them too, or will you still be sleeping on sofa bed, working three jobs, trying to save us all?"
The question landed like a stone. I didn't have an answer.
"Eat," she said finally, releasing my hand. "Then sleep. You look like death."
"Grazie, Mamma. You always know how to make a man feel good about himself."
She smiled. Rare, beautiful. "Is my job. Now eat."
\---
I finished eating, washed the dishes, then retreated to the sitting room. Pulled out the sofa bed and sat with my laptop open, reviewing my presentation for Tuesday.
The evidence was solid. Irrefutable. I had documents, data, testimony from affected families. Everything I needed to prove that Crown Estate development practices were harming working-class communities while generating millions in profit.
But Williams's warning kept echoing: Make sure they can't discredit you.
How would the palace respond? What would they do to protect themselves?
I pulled up The Guardian article again. Read through the comments section. Hundreds of them. Most supportive, but a few already trying to discredit me. "Bitter PhD student with an axe to grind." "Anti-monarchy agenda disguised as research." "Using his father's death for attention."
That last one made my stomach turn.
I wasn't using my father's death. I was honoring it. Making sure it meant something. Making sure no one else's father died because some executive decided profit mattered more than safety.
My phone buzzed. Text from Marco: You still awake? Need help with chemistry problem.
I smiled. Nearly 11 PM and my seventeen-year-old brother was still studying.
Come out to the sitting room. Bring your textbook.
Marco emerged from the bedroom in joggers and an Arsenal shirt, carrying his chemistry textbook and looking apologetic. "Sorry. I know you're busy. Just stuck on this one problem about reaction rates."
"Never too busy for you. Show me."
We sat on the sofa bed, working through the problem together. Marco was scary smart. Natural at maths and science in a way I'd never been. He could go to Oxford, Cambridge, anywhere. If we could afford it. If his A-level results were good enough. If the world was fair.
"There," I said after we'd worked through it. "Make sense now?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Dev." He didn't move to leave. "Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"Are you scared? About the forum on Tuesday?"
I considered lying, then decided he deserved honesty. "Yeah. A bit."
"What if the palace comes after you? What if they try to stop you?"
"Then I'll deal with it. The truth is the truth, Marco. Evidence doesn't care about power."
"But powerful people care about evidence. They can make your life difficult."
"Maybe. But they can't make me wrong." I looked at him. "You worried?"
"Little bit. Giulia says you're taking on something too big. That you could get hurt."
"Giulia worries too much."
"She says you don't worry enough." Marco picked at a thread on his joggers. "I just... I don't want anything bad to happen to you. You're always taking care of us. Who takes care of you?"
The question, so similar to Mum's, caught me off guard.
"I'm fine, Marco. I promise."
"You're working three jobs and sleeping on a sofa bed and fighting the Crown. That's not fine."
"It's temporary. Once I finish my PhD, get the LSE position, things will be better."
"And if the palace blocks the LSE position?"
I hadn't let myself think about that possibility. "They won't."
"But if they do?"
"Then I'll find something else. I always do." I put my arm around his shoulders. "Stop worrying about me. Your job is school. Getting into university. Building your own life. Let me handle the rest."
Marco leaned into the embrace for a moment, rare at seventeen, then pulled back. "Okay. But Dev? For what it's worth? I think what you're doing is brilliant. Dad would be proud."
After he went back to the bedroom, I sat alone in the dark, staring at my laptop screen.
Tuesday was seven days away.
Seven days to make sure my presentation was perfect. Seven days to prepare for whatever the palace might throw at me. Seven days to hold everything together. Family, work, research, survival.
I thought about what Marco said. What Mum said. What Giulia had implied in her text.
They were worried. And maybe they had reason to be.
But I'd come too far to back down now. My father had died because the Crown Estate valued profit over safety. Families were being displaced because the Crown Estate valued returns over communities. The environmental racism in my research wasn't abstract theory. It was people's lives. Real harm. Real injustice.
Someone had to speak up. Someone had to tell the truth.
If that someone was me, a working-class immigrant's son with a PhD almost finished and nothing left to lose, then so be it.
I pulled up my presentation one more time. Read through every slide. Checked every citation. Made sure every claim was backed by irrefutable evidence.
The palace could come at me with lawyers, with threats, with pressure on my university. But they couldn't change the facts. Couldn't erase the documents. Couldn't undo the harm they'd done.
And next Tuesday, the whole country would see it.
I finally closed my laptop around 1 AM. Set my alarm for 5:47. Thirteen minutes of rage-fueled consciousness away.
Lay back on the sofa bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about my father. About the scaffolding that killed him. About the report that proved it could have been prevented.
About justice, finally, after ten years.
Outside, Brixton slept around me. My neighborhood, my community, my home. The place my father had worked himself to
death to give us.
I'd make sure that meant something.
I'd make sure he hadn't died for nothing.
Tuesday couldn't come soon enough.