Chapter 2 - THE NAME ON THE BADGE
The candlelit dining room was so silent that the faint crackle of the wax seemed deafening.
Thirty-six elite guests sat entirely motionless, their eyes fixed on the small, dog-eared photograph in nine-year-old Ella’s trembling hand.
Gabriel Romano, the thirty-eight-year-old mafia boss who commanded half the shipping ports on the East Coast, stood like a statue. His dark eyes were glued to the picture.
He slowly reached out, his long fingers gently taking the photograph from his daughter.
“Ella,” Gabriel’s voice was dangerously low. “Where did you get this?”
“Mommy kept it in the bottom of her memory box,” Ella whispered, wiping a tear from her cheek. “She told me never to lose it. She said the lady in the picture was a friend from a long time ago.”
Gabriel turned the photograph over.
On the glossy back, printed in Catherine’s neat, familiar handwriting, was a date: March 14, three years ago.
And beneath it, a single sentence: “A promise made in the dark is a promise kept in the light.”
Gabriel looked up, his terrifying gaze fixing entirely on Vanessa Bellini.
“Rebecca Hale,” Gabriel said, rolling the name off his tongue like venom. “Who is Rebecca Hale, Vanessa? And why are you wearing her face in my dead wife’s hospital room?”
Vanessa stood frozen against her chair. The sophisticated, untouchable socialite facade was entirely gone. Her hands shook so violently that she gripped the back of the mahogany chair to keep from falling.
“It’s… it’s a mistake,” Vanessa stammered, her voice pitching into a high, frantic register. “A ridiculous coincidence! Lots of people look alike, Gabriel! That picture is grainy, it was taken years ago—!”
“It is a high-resolution photograph taken by a bedside nurse,” Gabriel interrupted, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “The lighting is clear. That is your face. And that name tag says Rebecca Hale.”
Gabriel stepped closer to her.
“You told me you were born into the Bellini shipping dynasty in Milan. You told me you moved to New York two years ago. But three years ago, you were standing in my wife’s hospital room using a different name.”
A murmur broke out among the guests at the table.
Vanessa’s eyes darted frantically toward the double doors of the dining room.
“Gabriel, listen to me,” she pleaded, taking a desperate step forward. “There’s a perfectly logical explanation. My family—the Bellinis—we had business with the hospital. I was doing charity work!”
“Charity work?” I spoke up, stepping out from the shadows near the sideboard.
My voice startled her. She spun around, her face twisting in pure rage.
“Shut your mouth, maid!” Vanessa shrieked.
“No, Claire, go on,” Gabriel commanded, never taking his eyes off his fiancée. “What were you going to say?”
I swallowed hard, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Mr. Romano, I worked part-time at St. Catherine’s Hospital kitchen while my mother was sick, six months before Mrs. Romano passed away,” I said steadily. “I remember volunteer records. There was never a Rebecca Hale volunteering in the palliative care ward. But I did see Mrs. Bellini—or whoever she was then—signing into the administrative basement every Tuesday night.”
Vanessa looked at me as if she wanted to murder me with her bare hands.
“You’re lying! You’re a scheming servant trying to protect your own job!”
“She’s not lying,” a quiet voice interrupted.
Everyone turned.
Ella was looking down at her memory box, having pulled out a small, folded envelope that had been tucked beneath a pile of greeting cards.
“Mommy got letters from her,” Ella said softly, holding up the envelope. “Every week after that lady visited. Mommy used to cry when she read them. She said she was being blackmailed.”
The entire room sucked in a collective breath.
Gabriel’s face went entirely pale. The veins throbbed dangerously along his jawline.
“Blackmailed,” Gabriel repeated, the word sounding like a death sentence.
He snatched the envelope from Ella’s small hands.
Inside was a single sheet of heavy stationery.
Gabriel unfolded it. He read the first line, and I watched his massive frame physically shudder.
He looked up at Vanessa, his eyes burning with a terrifying, righteous fury.
“You weren't visiting my wife to say goodbye, Vanessa,” Gabriel said, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “You were there to collect something else.”
Vanessa backed away until she hit the wall.
“Give me that letter,” she whispered.
“It says here,” Gabriel read aloud, ignoring her, his voice echoing off the crystal chandeliers, “‘If Catherine Romano does not sign over her personal shares of the Romano shipping trust to the Bellini family by Friday, the truth about her daughter’s real father will be published in the morning papers.’”
Silence fell over the dining room. A heavy, suffocating silence.
Ella looked up, confused and innocent. “Daddy? What does that mean?”
Gabriel didn’t answer his daughter.
He let the letter drop from his fingers like it was burning his skin. He slowly turned his head to look down at the nine-year-old girl he had raised, loved, and protected with his entire life.
And for the first time since I had known him, the great Gabriel Romano looked like a man whose world had just been completely demolished.
Because the letter didn't just threaten Catherine.
It implied that the little girl sitting at this table—the child he called his soul, his heart, his princess—might not carry his blood at all.
Before anyone could breathe, Vanessa lunged for the door.
“Hold her!” Gabriel roared.
Marco, the head of security, intercepted her before she reached the threshold, grabbing her by the arm and spinning her around.
Vanessa struggled, her hair coming undone, her elegant red dress twisting around her legs.
“You can’t keep me here!” she screamed, tears of panic finally breaking through her makeup. “If you hurt me, my father will destroy your entire estate by morning!”
Gabriel walked slowly toward her, his footsteps heavy and measured. He didn’t yell. He didn’t threaten.
He just stopped inches from her face.
“Your father is Vincent Bellini,” Gabriel said, his voice flat and terrifyingly calm. “The man who lost three cargo ships to my syndicates last year. He sent you to infiltrate my house, marry me, and steal my empire from the inside out.”
Vanessa’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
“And when my wife wouldn’t hand over her shares willingly,” Gabriel continued, “you used my daughter as a weapon against her.”
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his cell phone. With a few rapid taps, he dialed a number on speakerphone.
It rang twice.
A gruff voice answered on the other end.
May you like
“Boss?”
“Marco,” Gabriel said into the phone, keeping his eyes locked on Vanessa. “Take twenty men. Go to the Bellini downtown warehouse. Burn it to the ground. And bring Vincent Bellini to my basement. Tell him his daughter is about to tell me the truth about my wife’s death.”
