A LITTLE GIRL HEARD SOMETHING INSIDE THE GIFT BOX—THEN I LOCKED DOWN MY ENTIRE GALA

Augusto froze, his hand suspended in mid-air. “What? No, little one, I am your grandfather.”

“Beatriz, hush,” Ana pleaded, terrified. She tried to lower the girl’s hand.

“He locked her in the dark,” Beatriz insisted, stepping out from behind her mother. For a four-year-old, her voice was startlingly steady. “The lady who cried. She showed me his picture.”

I turned to Augusto. The grief on his face had vanished, replaced instantly by a defensive, hard edge.

“The child is confused,” Augusto snapped, standing up straight. “She’s traumatized by this ridiculous stunt.”

“She’s four, Augusto,” I said, stepping between him and the girl. “She doesn’t know how to lie about something like that.”

“Rafael,” I called out. “Get Augusto away from them.”

Rafael moved to intervene, but a sudden click drew our attention back to the silver gift box.

Rafael had removed the tape recorder to inspect the velvet lining. As he lifted the fabric, a false bottom gave way.

“Mr. Rossi,” Rafael said, his tone unreadable. “There is something else in here.”

He reached in and pulled out a faded Polaroid photograph.

He handed it to me.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was a picture of me. I looked about twenty years old. I was standing on a sunlit balcony, laughing, and my arms were wrapped around a pregnant woman.

The woman was Isabella Ferreira.

“What is this?” I whispered.

Augusto snatched the photo from my hand. His face turned purple with rage.

“You,” Augusto hissed, spitting the word at me. “You knew. You took her from me!”

“I have never seen this picture in my life,” I said, my mind spinning. “Augusto, I swear to you. I haven’t seen Isabella since the summer before she died.”

But looking at the photo, a sharp, piercing pain flared behind my left eye.

The summer before she died.

That was the same summer I was in a massive car pile-up in São Paulo. I had spent three weeks in a coma. My father told me I had severe retrograde amnesia. He said the six months leading up to the crash were gone forever.

I looked at the pregnant woman in the photo.

“Mateo,” Elena Costa whispered from the crowd. She looked terrified. “Your father didn’t want you to know. The Ferreira family and the Rossi family were at war. He said a child between you two would destroy the empire.”

I felt like the marble floor was opening up beneath me.

Isabella hadn’t just been my rival. We had been together. We were having a baby.

I looked down at Beatriz.

The dark eyes. The serious expression. It wasn’t just Isabella I was seeing.

It was me.

“She’s my daughter,” I breathed, the realization crashing over me with the force of a tidal wave.

Augusto lunged at me, his fists clenched. “You hid her! You faked Isabella’s death and kept my granddaughter from me!”

“I didn’t know!” I yelled, pushing him back.

Before Augusto could retaliate, Rafael’s radio crackled loudly.

“Boss,” the voice of the gate guard panicked over the static. “We have a problem at the main gate.”