Chapter 6 - MY FATHER’S GARAGE RULE
The ugly practice had an ancestor.
Of course.
My father, Enzo Bellucci, had a rule when we were children:
“You break it, you fix it.”
Simple.
If I cracked a garden chair, I helped the carpenter.
If Helena scraped a bicycle against a gate, she washed the gate.
If my brother broke a window with a baseball, he helped sweep safely after adults removed the glass.
Family responsibility.
No invoices.
No hunger.
No staff debts.
Then my grandfather expanded the phrase with employees.
Badly.
Men who damaged trucks sometimes worked extra.
The world was different.
Labor practices were worse.
Nobody should romanticize it.
By the time my father modernized the estate, written policies replaced those customs.
Helena kept the phrase.
Removed its limits.
Then turned it into a ledger.
Why?
She believed consequences created respect.
That belief had roots.
Her father died young.
My father helped raise her.
He praised toughness.
He told her:
“Never be the relative everyone has to rescue.”
Helena heard:
Never tolerate weakness.
Then she became Estate Services Chair.
Suddenly she had a whole household where disorder could be punished.
A broken plate became character.
A scratched car became debt.
A worker asking for grace became proof standards were slipping.
Then Leo.
Three years old.
A child who had recently started dropping spoons on purpose because he enjoyed the sound.
May you like
Helena expected moral accounting.
The absurdity finally exposed the system.
