All Chapters of My Mate Chose Her. I Left With His Baby.: Chapter 11 - Chapter 15

Serafina’s POVThe financial records arrived in three sealed boxes.I had expected ledgers. I hadn’t expected the sight of my own handwriting to make me cry.There it was on the first page, small and hurried, squeezed around a coffee stain. A list of replacement tires, fuel estimates, and wages for six people we had been terrified of disappointing.My work had existed before anyone called me Mrs. Marchetti.It was still there after the name stopped being mine.The accountant Vittorio recommended was a woman named Nora who wore reading glasses on a chain and had no patience for vague answers.“What did you contribute at the start?” she asked.“Cash from bookkeeping jobs. Then my work.”“Do you have records of the cash?”“Yes.”“Good. We’ll establish that first. Then the ownership agreements, unpaid compensation, and profits.”I had assumed I would need to defend every year I had spent at a desk instead of on the road.Nora simply opened another folder.“Work doesn’t become a gift becaus

Serafina’s POVThe first trial delivery nearly failed before a truck left the yard.Snow had closed the lower bridge overnight. The alternative road crossed a steep ridge, and the drivers wanted a decision before they loaded the medicine crates.For a moment, everyone looked toward the quartermaster.Then he looked at me.I had spent years making choices and letting Julian announce them. Standing in a room where people waited for my answer felt stranger than it should have.I spread the map across the table.“We don’t take the ridge.”“The pass adds four hours,” one driver said.“It does. But there’s a covered depot before the turn. We can divide the load there, keep the medicines warm, and use the smaller vehicles for the final stretch.”“The return cargo won’t be ready.”“Then we pay for an extra night rather than ask anyone to drive exhausted.”I recalculated the cost while they watched.We would make less on the trial. We would still cover wages and arrive safely.The quartermaster

Serafina’s POVBy Clara’s first birthday, Northlight had six trucks and a dispatch office with a window that actually opened.We still had difficult months. Fuel prices rose. A refrigerated load failed inspection, and we absorbed the loss rather than deliver spoiled food. Once, I went home convinced I had made a disastrous hiring decision and returned the next morning to find the new dispatcher had solved a scheduling problem that had defeated all of us.Being responsible for something did not mean being right all the time.I was learning that, too.I worked four days a week. When I needed a fifth, I arranged it instead of quietly surrendering every hour that belonged to me.One morning, a driver named Beth knocked on my office door with a resignation letter folded in her hand.Her son was ill. She had missed two departures in a month and assumed a third would cost her the job.“I don’t want to leave you short,” she said. “You gave me a chance.”I recognized the apology before she fini