Chapter 3 - THE BLOOD TEST AND THE BULLET
Luca did not accuse Marco that night.
That surprised Elena.
It surprised Marco more.
The old Luca would have locked every door, separated every witness, and demanded answers until sunrise.
This Luca looked at Sophia.
Everything changed around that fact.
“Marco,” he said calmly, “take Valentina’s car.”
Marco frowned.
“She left in it.”
“Then take mine.”
“Where?”
“Bring Dr. Bellini here.”
Marco’s expression sharpened.
“At midnight?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Luca looked at Sophia.
Marco understood.
“DNA.”
Elena stiffened.
“You don’t believe me?”
Luca turned toward her.
“I believe her face.”
Sophia was sitting on the edge of the table trying to make Buttons drink water from a spoon.
“But I have spent my life learning that certainty must survive evidence.”
Elena folded her arms.
“You haven’t changed much.”
“No.”
Then he added, “Not enough.”
That silenced her.
Marco left.
Luca’s security expanded around the restaurant.
No one explained to Sophia why.
She simply accepted that adults were suddenly behaving strangely.
By one in the morning, Dr. Bellini arrived carrying a medical bag and an expression of extreme displeasure.
“I am seventy years old.”
Luca nodded.
“I know.”
“I was asleep.”
“I know.”
“My wife thinks I have another woman.”
“She has met you.”
Bellini looked offended.
Elena almost smiled.
The doctor swabbed Luca’s cheek.
Then Sophia’s.
She wrinkled her nose.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Bellini said.
“No needle?”
“No needle.”
“I like science.”
Bellini smiled.
“So do I.”
The samples went to a private laboratory Luca trusted because the owner owed his family nothing and feared Luca only a reasonable amount.
Results would take hours.
Luca refused faster testing.
“Rushed results create mistakes.”
Elena stared at him.
“You really need paper?”
He looked at Sophia sleeping in a booth with his coat beneath her head.
“No.”
His voice softened.
“I need something no one can ever take from her.”
That answer reached Elena.
She looked away.
At two-thirty, Luca moved them to a secure apartment above the restaurant.
Not his home.
Elena noticed.
“Why here?”
“Because no one outside my inner security team knows I own it.”
“And your inner security team?”
“Currently consists of three men.”
“Marco?”
Luca’s expression became unreadable.
“Not tonight.”
That hurt.
Marco had been beside him for half his life.
But the second letter existed.
And Luca could not ignore it.
Sophia slept in the bedroom.
Luca remained in the living room.
Elena stood near the window.
Rain had become sleet.
New York shimmered coldly below.
“Who is Valentina?” she asked.
Luca glanced at her.
“A woman having a very bad date.”
Elena’s lips twitched.
“Serious?”
“No.”
“Your family seemed to think otherwise.”
“My family thinks many things.”
“She looked at me like she knew who I was.”
“Everyone close to me knew your name.”
Elena’s smile vanished.
“I’m sure they did.”
Luca understood.
For five years, his people had known Elena as the woman who abandoned him.
Not the woman threatened into disappearance.
He had never corrected a story he did not know was false.
“What did my father tell you about me?”
Elena turned.
“That you would choose the empire.”
“Over you?”
“Over anyone.”
He sat.
“And you believed him.”
“I had watched you choose it.”
The truth hurt because it was clean.
“You disappeared for three days once because someone in Brooklyn refused to pay you.”
“That was not—”
“You came home with blood on your cuff.”
Luca said nothing.
“You told me not to ask.”
He remembered.
He had kissed her forehead.
Told her everything was handled.
He had mistaken ignorance for safety.
Elena looked toward the bedroom.
“I wanted Sophia to grow up believing doors opened because people were kind, not because they were afraid of her last name.”
Luca’s voice lowered.
“And now?”
“She found your photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“One I kept.”
His chest tightened.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
She did.
He could see it.
But he did not push.
At 4:19 a.m., Bellini called.
Luca answered.
The doctor spoke six words.
“Probability of paternity exceeds ninety-nine percent.”
Luca closed his eyes.
It was ridiculous.
He had known.
From the second Sophia looked at him, he had known.
Still, hearing it made the room move.
Elena watched him.
“Well?”
He looked at her.
“She is mine.”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Luca walked into the bedroom.
Sophia slept sideways across the bed.
One sock missing.
Buttons trapped beneath her elbow.
He sat carefully beside her.
For five years, birthdays had happened without him.
Fevers.
First words.
First steps.
Christmas mornings.
Scraped knees.
Nightmares.
He had been alive through every one of them.
Sometimes only a few miles away.
He touched one finger to the back of her hand.
Sophia opened her eyes.
Children possessed terrifying instincts.
“You’re still here.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Her eyes closed again.
Luca remained there.
At six-ten, Elena found him still sitting beside the bed.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I’m used to not sleeping.”
“With a child?”
“With fear.”
That sentence settled between them.
Luca stood.
“I will fix this.”
Elena’s expression hardened.
“No.”
He frowned.
“That is exactly what I mean.”
“What?”
“You say that like the world is a door you can kick down.”
“Sometimes it is.”
“And sometimes people get crushed behind it.”
He understood her warning.
Sophia first.
Not vengeance.
Before he could answer, his phone vibrated.
A security alert.
The restaurant’s loading entrance had opened.
Unauthorized.
Luca turned toward the monitor.
Camera one showed nothing.
Camera two went black.
Then camera three.
Someone was inside.
“Elena.”
She saw his face.
“What?”
“Take Sophia into the bathroom.”
“Why?”
“Now.”
She did not argue.
Luca drew the pistol from beneath his jacket.
The apartment door was reinforced.
Alarm silent.
His phone showed movement on the stairwell camera.
One man.
Then another.
Masks.
Professional.
They bypassed the restaurant below without searching.
They were coming directly upstairs.
Someone knew the apartment existed.
That narrowed the list.
Luca called the only security man stationed nearby.
No answer.
His blood went cold.
A knock sounded.
Three taps.
Then Marco’s voice.
“Luca.”
Luca froze.
“Open the door.”
Luca said nothing.
“Elena and Sophia are in danger.”
Luca moved closer without lowering the gun.
“How do you know they are here?”
Silence.
Then Marco said, “Because I put them here.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Five years ago.”
Elena had returned from the bathroom doorway.
She heard.
Her face changed.
Luca unlocked only the inner latch.
“Explain.”
“I helped your father arrange the first escape.”
Elena whispered, “What?”
Marco continued through the door.
“I thought Antonio was protecting them.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“And the second letter?”
“I didn’t send it.”
“How did you know about it?”
“I didn’t until tonight.”
“Then why are masked men on my stairs?”
“Because someone followed me from Bellini’s house.”
Gunfire exploded below.
Marco swore.
“Open the damn door.”
Luca made a decision.
He opened it.
Marco entered backward, firing down the stairwell.
Luca joined him.
Two attackers withdrew.
One fired upward.
The bullet struck the wall inches from Luca’s shoulder.
Elena screamed.
Sophia cried from the bathroom.
Something inside Luca went feral.
He started toward the stairs.
Marco grabbed him.
“No.”
“They came for my daughter.”
“And that is why you stay with her.”
Luca looked at him.
Marco’s hand tightened around his arm.
“Be her father before you become Antonio’s son.”
The words hit.
Luca stopped.
Security reinforcements arrived three minutes later.
One attacker was captured near the kitchen.
The other escaped.
The captured man refused to speak.
Until Marco searched his pocket.
Inside was an old silver medallion.
Black V inside a circle.
The same mark on Elena’s letter.
Luca stared.
His father’s symbol.
Marco’s face changed.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Antonio stopped using this mark ten years before he died.”
Luca looked at him.
“Who still had access?”
Marco answered slowly.
“Only family.”
Luca’s phone rang.
A private number.
He answered.
A man’s voice spoke in Italian.
“Congratulations on meeting your daughter.”
Luca became perfectly still.
He knew the voice.
His uncle.
Vittorio Verano.
“Uncle.”
Across the room, Elena went white.
Vittorio laughed softly.
“You should have listened to your father.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing that belongs to you.”
Luca looked toward Sophia.
“That answer needs improvement.”
“Send Elena and the child away again.”
“No.”
“Then history repeats.”
“What history?”
Silence.
Then Vittorio said, “Ask Marco who really killed your father.”
The line went dead.
Luca turned.
Marco had heard enough to understand.
His face had gone pale.
Elena whispered, “Luca.”
But Luca was staring only at his oldest friend.
“What does he mean?”
Marco said nothing.
“Who killed my father?”
May you like
Marco’s silence answered before his mouth did.
And Luca realized the betrayal inside his family had begun long before Sophia was born.
