Chapter 2 - THE BLOODLINE BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS
The grand dining room of the DeLuca Chicago mansion was so quiet you could hear the distant, heavy hum of the refrigerator in the service pantry. Thirty-eight high-society guests sat motionless, their forks hovering inches above half-eaten plates of filet mignon. Nobody blinked. Nobody dared to breathe.
Julian DeLuca—twenty-six years old, wearing a custom charcoal Italian tuxedo with gold-stitched lapels—took half a step backward toward the carved mahogany doors. His face, usually flushed with the arrogant certainty of a man who owned half the commercial real estate on the North Side, had gone the color of spoiled milk.
"Uncle Ray," Julian stammered, his voice cracking slightly on the high note. "What... what are you talking about? Are you losing your mind?"
Raymond DeLuca didn't look at his nephew. The seventy-two-year-old elder statesmen of the family kept his heavy, sorrow-filled eyes fixed entirely on Dominic. His hand, gripping the stem of an empty crystal wineglass, trembled so violently that the rim clicked against his gold signet ring.
Dominic slowly released my hand.
The warmth of his palm vanished, leaving my fingers cold against the linen tablecloth. He didn't turn to look at me. His silver-haired head remained tilted toward his older brother, his broad shoulders tensing under his black suit jacket until the wool stretched tight across his back.
"Raymond," Dominic said. His voice wasn't loud. It was terrifyingly flat—the tone he had used forty years ago when people stopped asking him questions twice. "Repeat what you just said."
Raymond lowered his head. A heavy, tired sigh escaped his chest, rattling through his gray mustache. "You heard me, Dom. Rosie never gave up her baby voluntarily. And Julian... Julian isn't Victoria’s nephew from Boston. He never was."
"Uncle Ray! Shut up! Stop listening to this old lunatic!" Julian shouted, lunging forward with his hands raised, his veneer of polished corporate charm completely shattering.
Two of Dominic’s personal bodyguards—men built like brick smoke-houses who had stood silently by the fireplace all evening—stepped out of the shadows with terrifying speed. Their heavy hands clamped onto Julian’s shoulders, pinning him hard against the back of his chair before he could take another step.
"Stay down, kid," the larger guard rumbled, his grip tightening until Julian winced in pain.
Dominic didn't even glance at his presumptive heir. His dark eyes remained locked on his brother. "Raymond. Explain. Now."
"It was 1984," Raymond began, his voice raspy and thick with decades of suppressed guilt. He reached into his breast pocket with a trembling hand, pulling out a small, folded, yellowed photograph wrapped in plastic. He laid it flat on the pristine white tablecloth, pushing it across the polished wood toward Dominic. "You remember when you were sent down to Springfield for six months to handle the state senate contracts after the docks went sideways? You told me to look after Rosie. You told me to make sure she was safe while you built this damn empire."
Dominic’s gaze dropped to the photograph.
I leaned forward, my breath catching.
It was a picture of my mother, Rose, smiling brightly in a small apartment kitchen, holding a baking tray. Her hair was dark and curly, exactly like mine. But standing beside her wasn't Dominic.
It was Raymond.
"She wasn't alone, Dom," Raymond whispered, a tear finally cutting a clean path through the wrinkles on his cheek. "I fell in love with her first. Before you ever brought her flowers from the stockyards. But she chose you. And when you left for Springfield, thinking you were too big-time for a waitress from Milwaukee, Rosie came to me crying because she was three months pregnant with Caroline."
The room seemed to tilt on its axis.
I gripped the edge of the mahogany table, my knuckles turning white. My mother... forty years of believing she was a tragic, abandoned single mother who spent her nights crying over a man who didn't care.
"You told me she lost the baby," Dominic said, his voice dropping an octave lower, vibrating with a lethal, suppressed fury. "You stood at our father’s grave and looked me in the eye and swore on a stack of Bibles that the child didn't survive the fever."
"I lied," Raymond sobbed, covering his face with his trembling hands. "I couldn't bear the thought of her looking at me and seeing the man who took her away from you. So I set her up in a quiet apartment in Racine. I paid her medical bills anonymously. I sent money every month. I was the one who bought her that green Thermos on her birthday, Dom—not you. I lied about everything so I could keep being her friend, keep being the 'Uncle Ray' she trusted."
Dominic stood up so fast his chair crashed backward onto the marble floor.
The thirty-eight guests flinched collectively.
Dominic didn't look at the chair. He walked around the long banquet table with slow, heavy steps, his cane tapping rhythmically against the stone. He stopped directly in front of his older brother.
Raymond didn't try to stand. He just sat there, waiting for the blow that every man in Chicago knew was coming.
Instead of hitting him, Dominic reached down, grabbed Raymond by the lapels of his expensive tweed jacket, and hauled him halfway across the table with a terrifying display of raw strength.
"And Julian?" Dominic breathed, his face inches from his brother's. "If Julian isn't Victoria’s nephew... whose son is he?"
Julian thrashed against the guards holding him, his face bright red, screaming hysterically. "Don't tell him! Uncle Ray, if you tell him, I swear to God—"
Raymond looked past Dominic, his tear-filled eyes landing on the frantic young man pinned to the chair.
"Julian is Victoria’s son, Dom," Raymond whispered, the final secret tearing free from his soul. "Born six months after Victoria and you got married. But Victoria didn't have him with you."
Dominic froze.
The silence returned, heavier and darker than before.
May you like
"Whose child is he?" Dominic asked, his voice shaking.
Raymond swallowed hard. "He’s my son, Dominic. Victoria and I had an affair while you were consolidating the syndicate in New York. When Julian was born, we realized that if you found out, you’d kill us both. So Victoria shipped him off to her sister in Boston, pretended he was her nephew, and fifteen years ago, she brought him back here as her heir—grooming him to take your throne so our bloodline would control the DeLuca family tree behind your back."
