Chapter 2 - THE SEVEN LETTERS
At 1:20 on Christmas morning, Lucia Moretti entered her son’s study expecting an explanation for a canceled engagement.
Instead, she found Dominic sitting behind his father’s desk with Sophia Carter’s photograph beneath his hand.
Vanessa followed Lucia into the room, still wearing the emerald gown selected for an announcement that had never happened. Downstairs, the final guests were collecting their coats. The string quartet had stopped playing. Staff carried trays of untouched champagne back toward the kitchen.
Elena and Lily were no longer in the mansion.
Dominic had placed them in a hotel suite under a name unconnected to Moretti Holdings. The reservation had been made by Gabriel Russo, an investigator who had worked for Dominic’s father but had never reported to Lucia. An independent attorney named Rebecca Sloan was already on her way there.
Lucia did not know any of that.
“Two hundred people came here expecting you to propose,” she said. “Vanessa’s father has been calling me for an hour.”
“Then stop answering.”
Lucia’s eyes narrowed. “What did that maid say to you?”
Dominic looked at Vanessa. “Give us the room.”
Vanessa’s face tightened. “You let everyone believe tonight was ours. I deserve to know why it ended.”
She was right.
Dominic hated that the truth made him no less cruel to her.
“The child beneath the staircase may be my daughter,” he said.
Vanessa went perfectly still.
Lucia did not.
Her fingers tightened around her pearls.
That was all.
But Dominic had spent his life reading the instant before another man lied. The shallow inhale. The fixed gaze. The body preparing to defend a story before the mouth knew which words it would use.
“You knew Sophia was pregnant,” he said.
Lucia glanced at Vanessa. “This is not a conversation for outsiders.”
“She was going to become family ten minutes ago.”
“Dominic,” Vanessa said quietly, “do not use me to punish your mother.”
Again, she was right.
He stood. “Sophia wrote seven letters. My name is on every envelope. Three were stamped by Moretti mail security and returned to her.”
Vanessa looked at Lucia.
Lucia’s expression remained composed. “The Carter woman was frightened and unstable. She represented a vulnerability during the Rosario investigation.”
“Her name was Sophia.”
“I remember her name.”
“Did you order my staff to block her letters?”
“I instructed them to protect you from disruptive communications.”
Dominic heard the confession arrive dressed as concern.
“Did you know she was carrying my child?”
“I knew she claimed to be pregnant. That is not the same thing.”
“You could have told me.”
“You were talking about abandoning everything your father built. Two men had been shot outside your club. Federal agents were at the gates. You were not thinking clearly.”
“I was thirty-four years old.”
“You were my son.”
There it was.
Not love.
Jurisdiction.
Dominic placed both palms on the desk because he did not trust his hands.
“She died five weeks after giving birth.”
Lucia’s face changed.
Her certainty vanished so completely that Dominic knew she had not known. Precision mattered, even in fury. His mother had driven Sophia away and blocked the truth. She had not caused the medical complications that killed her.
“When?” Lucia whispered.
“Three years ago.”
“And the child?”
“Her name is Lily.”
Lucia took one step toward him. “Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“If she is a Moretti—”
“Stop.”
The word cracked through the study.
Dominic lowered his voice immediately. “You will not contact Elena. You will not search for Lily. You will not ask household staff where they went. You will not send a gift, a lawyer, a doctor, or a priest. If Lily is my daughter, blood gives you no automatic access to her.”
Lucia stared as though the concept itself offended her.
“You are threatening your mother.”
“I am establishing a boundary.”
Vanessa turned away, pressing one hand to her mouth.
Dominic looked at her. “I am sorry.”
“For which part?”
The question contained no cruelty. That made it worse.
“For allowing tonight to be planned around a promise I had not decided to make.”
“Were you going to propose?”
The ring waited upstairs in his dressing room. His mother had ordered it from a jeweler. His secretary had cleared the announcement with public relations. Dominic had accepted every arrangement because refusing would have required him to admit he did not love Vanessa enough.
“No,” he said.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
When she opened them, they were bright with tears. “Thank you for finally not lying.”
She left without slamming the door.
Lucia watched her go. “You have humiliated an innocent woman over an accusation brought by a desperate employee.”
“No. I humiliated Vanessa by letting you arrange my life. That part belongs to me.” Dominic picked up Sophia’s photograph. “The rest will be established by evidence.”
He called Gabriel into the room.
The investigator carried a sealed evidence receipt. Under Lucia’s gaze, Dominic listed the seven letters, the photograph, Sophia’s note to Lily, and the Moretti mail-security stamps. Lucia refused to sign as a witness.
Gabriel did not ask her twice.
At the hotel, Rebecca Sloan sat across from Elena while Lily slept beneath a white duvet with her rabbit tucked under one arm. Elena had expected a Moretti lawyer to pressure her into surrendering the originals.
Rebecca surprised her.
“I do not represent Dominic,” she said. “Mr. Moretti is paying my initial fee because you were placed in an unequal situation inside his house. After tonight, you decide whether to retain me.”
Elena held Sophia’s safe-deposit key in her fist. “Can he take Lily?”
“Not because of money. Not because of a DNA result. You are her legal guardian. Courts consider attachment, stability, safety, and the child’s best interests.”
“His family owns half the judges in New York.”
“Then we document every step, use a judge selected through ordinary procedure, and make interference expensive enough to expose.”
At four in the morning, Gabriel called Dominic.
The household mail supervisor from four years earlier had been located in Queens. Her name was Margaret Ellis. She remembered Sophia’s letters.
More importantly, she remembered who collected them.
Not Lucia.
Carlo Bianchi, the estate’s former security director, had taken each envelope to a locked records room before returning it to the sender. Carlo had left Moretti employment two years earlier with a settlement large enough to purchase a house in Florida.
“Where is he now?” Dominic asked.
“Not Florida,” Gabriel said. “He flew into Newark yesterday.”
Dominic looked toward the silent mansion.
Carlo had returned to New York on the same day Sophia’s daughter appeared beneath the staircase.
Then an alarm sounded from the east corridor.
Someone had entered the household archives using Lucia’s old security code.
By the time Dominic reached the records room, the door was open and the shelves containing four years of mail logs had been emptied.
On the floor lay a single envelope.
It was addressed in Sophia’s handwriting.
But this one had never been returned.
May you like
Across the front, someone had written two words in red ink.
ASK LUCIA.
