Chapter 2 - THE CHILD WHO SHOULD NOT EXIST
“Don’t ask me that,” Elena whispered.
Leo rested against my chest, warm and impossibly calm, one tiny hand still curled around my finger.
I stared at Elena.
“You walked into my house carrying a child who has my son’s face.”
Her eyes closed.
“You let me hold him.”
“Mr. Moretti—”
“You let me pass him in hallways for eight months without telling me why he looks like Mateo.”
Dominic quietly moved Lorenzo away from the center of the room, but I barely noticed.
Everything inside me had narrowed to Elena.
To Leo.
To the crescent-shaped birthmark beneath his ear.
“Who is his father?”
Elena’s mouth trembled.
Then she looked at the baby in my arms.
“You are.”
The room disappeared.
For several seconds, all I heard was the blood beating behind my ears.
Lorenzo muttered something under his breath.
Dominic swore.
I didn’t move.
“What did you say?”
Elena wiped at her face.
“Leo is your son.”
My grip tightened protectively around the child.
“No.”
“It’s true.”
“I have never touched you.”
“I know.”
That answer hit differently.
I stared at her.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Elena took one careful step toward me.
“Leo is not biologically mine.”
I felt the floor shift beneath me.
“He was born from an embryo.”
Silence.
My dead wife’s face rose in my memory.
Valentina.
Her laughing in the kitchen with flour on her cheek.
Her sleeping beside Mateo’s crib because she was terrified he would stop breathing if she left the room.
Her crying the day the fertility specialist told us we had four viable embryos.
One had become Mateo.
Three remained frozen.
After Mateo’s funeral, I had been told the remaining embryos had been destroyed at Valentina’s request shortly before her own death.
My own death certificate collection.
My wife.
My son.
My future.
All gone within eleven weeks.
I had believed every word.
I looked at Elena.
“What embryo?”
She began crying harder.
“One of yours and Valentina’s.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Leo made a soft sound and pressed his cheek against my chest.
I looked down at him.
Not Mateo.
Mateo’s brother.
My son.
The room blurred.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“Why would you carry my child?”
“Because Valentina asked me to.”
My head snapped toward her.
“You knew my wife?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I worked at St. Catherine’s Fertility Center.”
I remembered the clinic.
Private.
Expensive.
Discrete enough for judges, senators, actors, and men like me.
Elena continued.
“I was a reproductive nurse. Valentina came often because she was terrified someone would tamper with the remaining embryos.”
“Why would she think that?”
Elena looked toward Dominic.
Then toward Lorenzo.
Finally back to me.
“Because she believed Mateo’s accident wasn’t an accident.”
Something vicious stirred inside my chest.
“Say that again.”
“She believed someone inside your family was planning to take him.”
I crossed the distance between us before I realized I had moved.
Elena flinched.
Leo whimpered.
I stopped instantly.
That sound brought me back.
I lowered my voice.
“Tell me everything.”
Elena nodded.
“Three weeks before the accident, Valentina came to the clinic alone. She was terrified. She told me someone had accessed Mateo’s pediatric records. Someone had requested his blood type, birth certificate, photographs, even dental information he didn’t have yet.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She said you were preparing for a war with the Bellandi family. She thought if she accused someone without proof, you’d kill the wrong person.”
She knew me well.
Especially the man I had been then.
Elena swallowed.
“Valentina asked me to move one embryo out of the regular storage system.”
My voice went quiet.
“That’s illegal.”
“Yes.”
“You did it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she was crying.”
Elena looked at Leo.
“And because she told me that if anything happened to her or Mateo, she needed to know some piece of your family remained beyond anyone else’s control.”
I felt sick.
Leo played with the button on my shirt while Elena destroyed the foundation of my life one sentence at a time.
“She left instructions. Money. Documents. A letter.”
“For me?”
“No.”
The answer surprised me.
“For me.”
Elena continued.
“I was only supposed to open it if both Valentina and Mateo died.”
My voice hardened.
“And they did.”
“That’s what everyone believed.”
My eyes narrowed.
“Believed?”
Elena’s face changed.
That single expression terrified me more than everything else she had said.
“What do you know?”
“After the funeral, I checked the clinic records. Someone had broken into the restricted database the night of Mateo’s accident.”
“Who?”
“I traced an authorization number.”
She hesitated.
“Dr. Marcus Bellini.”
I knew the name.
Bellini had been my family’s physician for twenty-two years.
He had delivered three Moretti cousins.
He had examined my father before his heart attack.
He had been one of the doctors who signed Mateo’s death documents.
My hands went numb.
“Elena.”
“Yes?”
“What exactly did Bellini access?”
Her voice dropped.
“Mateo’s medical file.”
The temperature in the room seemed to fall.
“Anything else?”
“The morgue transfer authorization.”
Dominic moved closer.
“Boss.”
I finally looked at him.
His face had gone hard.
“That isn’t possible,” he said. “I watched the casket arrive at the church.”
“You watched a casket,” Elena replied quietly.
Nobody spoke.
I looked down at Leo.
A son I hadn’t known existed.
A son created with the woman I had loved more than life itself.
Then I thought of the other little boy.
A closed coffin.
Rain falling over black umbrellas.
My mother begging me not to open the lid.
My uncle Salvatore gripping my shoulder and telling me, Be strong for the family.
My father’s physician telling me Mateo’s injuries would haunt me forever if I looked.
Every person I trusted had persuaded me not to see my own dead child.
I turned toward Lorenzo.
He was still kneeling near the wall.
Blood had dried along his jaw.
“You.”
He stiffened.
I walked toward him with Leo in my arms.
“You sold information about my shipping routes.”
Lorenzo shook his head.
“I sold nothing.”
“I have transaction records.”
“You have planted records.”
Dominic raised his gun again.
“Careful.”
Lorenzo laughed bitterly.
“You want to shoot me? Fine. But ask yourself why the exact route I supposedly betrayed was one your uncle personally authorized.”
The room became still.
“Salvatore?”
Lorenzo looked directly at me.
“I wasn’t selling your routes to the Bellandis.”
“Then who were you contacting?”
“A private investigator in Boston.”
My pulse changed.
“Why?”
“Because your accountant found payments from Moretti Logistics to a private pediatric care company in Connecticut.”
I forgot how to breathe.
Lorenzo continued.
“The payments started three years ago.”
Dominic lowered his weapon.
My voice came out rough.
“What pediatric company?”
“Bright Horizons Development Center.”
“And why would my shipping company be paying them?”
“That’s what I was trying to find out.”
Lorenzo’s eyes dropped to Leo.
“Until somebody decided I was a traitor.”
I turned toward Dominic.
“Untie him.”
Dominic didn’t hesitate.
The knife came out.
The ropes fell.
Lorenzo rubbed his wrists.
Elena suddenly gripped the edge of my desk.
“There’s more.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
She seemed afraid to say it.
“Valentina’s letter had one sentence I never understood.”
“Tell me.”
Elena’s voice broke.
“She wrote, ‘If they tell Luca Mateo is dead, do not believe them until he sees his son with his own eyes.’”
I stopped breathing.
Leo reached up and patted my cheek.
I stared into the same deep brown eyes that had haunted my dreams for three years.
Mateo’s coffin had been closed.
I had never seen his body.
I had never identified him.
I had never touched him goodbye.
For three years, I had lived beside a grave.
For three years, I had believed my son was inside it.
But suddenly I knew exactly what I was going to do.
I handed Leo gently to Elena.
She held him tightly.
“Dominic.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Call the cemetery.”
His expression changed.
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
I grabbed my coat.
Lorenzo stood.
“Where are we going?”
I looked at all three of them.
“To find out who I buried.”
Then I looked at Leo one more time.
My second son.
My impossible second chance.
And for the first time in three years, something more dangerous than grief moved through my blood.
May you like
Hope.
“If that coffin is empty,” I said quietly, “I’m going to tear apart every lie this family has ever told me.”
