Chapter 2 - THE HOSPITAL RECORD
The silence in Don Vito’s private study was so absolute that Isabella could hear the rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows.
She stared at the man standing in the doorway. Lorenzo Moretti. The younger son. The one who had supposedly perished in a car bombing two decades ago. His dark hair was threaded with silver now, his face lined with the harsh geography of a man who had lived in the shadows. But his eyes—cold, piercing, and terrifyingly calm—were exactly as she remembered them.
In his hand, he held a fragile, yellowed piece of paper. The original hospital intake form from thirty-five years ago.
“Ask her, Father,” Lorenzo repeated, stepping fully into the room. His heavy boots made no sound on the Persian rug. He looked at Isabella with a mixture of pity and absolute disdain. “Ask the dutiful wife what she actually did on the night of November twelfth.”
Don Vito gripped the edge of his mahogany desk. The patriarch’s hands, normally steady as stone, were trembling. The sheer shock of seeing his dead son standing before him warred with the devastating implications of the paternity test he had just read.
“Isabella,” Don Vito’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble. “What is he talking about? If Vincent is not Dominic’s father, who is?”
Isabella’s breath hitched in her throat. For thirty-five years, she had carried this secret like a heavy stone in her chest. She had swallowed her pride, endured Vincent’s infidelities, and turned a blind eye to his cruelty, all to protect the lie that kept her alive.
She looked at Sophia, who was clutching seven-year-old Daniel against her side. The little boy was staring at the adults, his stuffed bear pressed tightly against his chin.
“Grandma?” Daniel whispered, his small voice echoing in the tense room. “Why is that man yelling?”
“Hush, sweetie. It’s okay,” Sophia whispered, kissing the top of his head, though her own eyes were wide with terror.
Isabella closed her eyes. The truth was finally here. The walls of the empire she had helped build were crumbling, and she was the one holding the sledgehammer.
“Our baby died,” Isabella said. The words tasted like ash.
Don Vito frowned, his thick white eyebrows drawing together. “What?”
“The night I went into labor,” Isabella continued, opening her eyes to meet the patriarch’s furious gaze. “Vincent wasn’t there. He was with his mistress in the city. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. He was stillborn. A beautiful, perfect little boy. And he was dead.”
A heavy, suffocating grief filled the room. Even Lorenzo lowered the hospital record slightly.
“I was terrified,” Isabella’s voice trembled, but she forced herself to stand tall. “Vincent had warned me that if I didn’t give him a healthy heir, he would throw me out onto the streets. He would have ruined my family. So, I paid a desperate, terrified nurse in the maternity ward. She found a teenage girl who had just given birth to an unwanted child and was abandoning him. I bought that baby with my wedding jewelry.”
Don Vito sank heavily into his leather chair. The man who had ordered the execution of his own son just twenty-four hours ago suddenly looked incredibly fragile. “Dominic. My grandson… is a stranger’s child.”
“He is the boy I raised and loved as my own!” Isabella fired back, her maternal instinct flaring. “He has my heart, even if he doesn't have your blood!”
“He has the blood of a peasant!” Don Vito roared, slamming his fist onto the desk. “You diluted the Moretti line with trash! And you let me hand my empire over to a bastard!”
“She did worse than that, Father,” Lorenzo interrupted, stepping closer to the desk. He dropped the yellowed hospital record onto the polished wood. “Look at the name of the teenage girl who abandoned that baby. Look at the name of Dominic’s real mother.”
Don Vito put his reading glasses back on with shaking hands. He stared at the faded ink.
Then, he looked up, the color completely draining from his face.
“Elena Vargas,” Don Vito whispered.
Isabella frowned. The name meant nothing to her. She had never known the girl’s identity.
But it clearly meant something to Don Vito.
“Who is Elena Vargas?” Isabella demanded.
Lorenzo turned to her, a bitter, twisted smile playing on his lips. “She was the maid, Isabella. The maid who worked in this very house thirty-six years ago. The maid who mysteriously vanished after she was discovered pregnant.”
Isabella felt the floor drop out from beneath her. A maid.
“And the father?” Isabella asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Lorenzo looked directly at Don Vito. “Tell her, Father. Tell her whose bastard son she’s been raising.”
Don Vito couldn’t speak. The patriarch’s chest heaved.
“It was Vincent’s,” Lorenzo said, his voice dripping with venom. “Vincent slept with the maid. He got her pregnant, threatened to kill her if she didn't disappear, and forced her out. You didn't buy a stranger's baby, Isabella. You bought your own husband’s illegitimate son.”
Isabella stumbled backward, bumping into a heavy bookshelf. Her mind reeled. Vincent had made a monster out of his own illegitimate child. She had spent thirty-five years raising the product of her husband’s infidelity, entirely unaware.
“But wait,” Sophia’s voice shook as she spoke up from the corner of the room. She was clutching Daniel so tightly the boy was squirming. “If Dominic is Vincent’s biological son… then he is a true Moretti. He is Don Vito’s grandson.”
“Yes,” Lorenzo nodded slowly.
“Then why,” Sophia pointed a trembling finger at the DNA report on the desk, “does that test say that Daniel is not Don Vito’s great-grandson? If Dominic is a Moretti, Daniel should be a Moretti.”
The room fell deadly silent.
Lorenzo’s cold eyes shifted from Don Vito to Sophia. “A brilliant question, my dear. If Dominic is a Moretti, the only way Daniel isn't related to my father… is if Dominic isn't Daniel’s father.”
Isabella gasped, turning to her daughter-in-law.
Sophia’s face was completely drained of blood. She looked like a cornered animal.
“Sophia?” Isabella whispered, taking a step toward her. “Is this true? Is Dominic not the father?”
Sophia looked down at little Daniel, tears spilling hot and fast down her cheeks. “Dominic never touched me,” she sobbed, her voice breaking. “He preferred the company of men. It was a secret he guarded with his life. When we were forced to marry, we made an agreement. I would keep his secret, and he would leave me alone.”
“Then whose child is this?” Don Vito growled, recovering his fury. He pointed a trembling finger at the seven-year-old boy. “Who put a bastard in my house?!”
Sophia reached into her blouse with shaking hands. She pulled out a heavy, tarnished silver St. Christopher medal on a thick chain.
Isabella recognized it instantly.
“His father,” Sophia cried, “is the man who gave me this.”
From the shadows of the hallway just outside the study door, a deep, familiar voice resonated.
May you like
“He is my son.”
Everyone turned as Mateo, the family’s ruthless, thirty-eight-year-old Head of Security—the man who had personally executed Vincent in the basement just hours ago—stepped into the light.
