Chapter 3 - The DNA Protocol
By 3:00 AM, the Moretti mansion's private medical suite looked less like a home examining room and more like a high-security forensic lab. Dr. Jonathan Vance—no relation to the consigliere, but a man whose medical license and professional discretion had been bought and paid for by the syndicate decades ago — packed up his genetic sequencing kit with trembling hands.
Rocco sat in a leather armchair in the corner of the room, a glass of un-iced bourbon resting between his knees. He hadn't spoken a word in two hours. Beside him stood Marco, holding a tablet displaying preliminary digital readouts.
"Well, Jonathan?" Rocco finally asked, his voice deadpan.
Dr. Vance swallowed hard, wiping sweat from his forehead with a linen handkerchief. "Mr. Moretti... the results of the rapid mitochondrial DNA panel are definitive. There is a 99.999% probability that the infant found tonight shares direct biological lineage with the Moretti bloodline."
The room went dead silent. Marco's eyebrows shot up toward his hairline.
"Explain," Rocco ordered, staring into the amber liquid of his glass.
"The baby's genetic markers match yours, sir," Dr. Vance explained, pointing to a series of glowing green graphs on the medical monitor. "Furthermore, the hospital bracelet isn't just from St. Helena... it corresponds to an internal filing system used exclusively in the private maternity ward. An archive that was supposedly sealed and purged following the tragic complications surrounding your late wife’s delivery nine years ago."
Rocco’s head snapped up, his eyes locking onto the doctor. "My first son died at birth. The doctors told me the placenta failed. They gave me a closed casket."
"According to these genetic markers, sir... that child did not die," Dr. Vance said quietly. "He was taken."
The revelation hit Rocco like a physical blow. Nine years ago, when his first wife, Isabella, had passed away during childbirth while he was overseas brokering a crucial port expansion in Palermo, he had trusted the family doctors, the hospital administrators, and most of all, his inner circle. He had buried his grief beneath mountains of corporate acquisitions and syndicate expansion, turning his heart into stone.
If his son had survived... who had stolen him? And why bring him back tonight, only to dump him in the kitchen trash like refuse?
"Marco," Rocco said, standing up so abruptly his chair screeched against the floor.
"Sir?"
"Find out who accessed the St. Helena archives in the last forty-eight hours. Check every digital footprint, every bribe-fed nurse, every crooked administrator. And bring me the log of everyone who entered my estate tonight."
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"Consider it done," Marco replied, his eyes narrowing with lethal intent. "If someone tried to play a sick game inside your own house, we'll skin them alive before sunrise."
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