Chapter 2 - THE SILVER ROSARY IN THE RABBIT
The heavy glass pitch slipped from my fingers and shattered against the marble floor. Cold water soaked into my worn sneakers, but I couldn’t move. Leah’s tiny fists were twisted so tightly into the fabric of my apron that her knuckles were white.
"Up," she whimpered, burying her damp face against my knee. "Mama, up."
My chest ached with a violent, suffocating pressure. For twenty-four months, I had walked through life like a ghost, mourning a daughter I wasn't even allowed to hold before they buried her. Now, a little girl with my late grandmother’s amber eyes was clinging to me as if her life depended on it.
My manager, Arthur, rushed forward, his face pale with sweat. "Mr. Caruso, I am so sorry. Clara is new here. I’ll fire her immediately—"
"Touch her, and you lose your tongue," Damian said. His voice wasn't loud, yet Arthur froze mid-step and backed away with his hands raised.
Damian crouched down beside Leah. The ruthless man who made city councilmen tremble looked remarkably fragile as he reached toward his daughter. "Principessa," he murmured gently. "Let go of the lady's apron so we can talk."
"No!" Leah screamed, a raw, scratchy sound from a throat unused to speaking. When Damian tried to pry her fingers loose, she buried her face into my stomach and began to hyperventilate.
Without thinking, instinct took over. I dropped to my knees on the wet marble, ignoring the shards of glass biting into my skin, and wrapped my arms around her trembling little body. I lifted her onto my hip, rubbing small circles on her back the exact way I used to soothe her through my belly when I was pregnant.
"Shh, sweet girl," I whispered against her soft dark curls. "I’m right here. Nobody’s going to make me leave."
Within seconds, her ragged breathing slowed. She rested her chin on my shoulder and sucked her thumb, her eyes locked onto the silver locket around my neck.
Damian stood up slowly, his dark eyes burning into mine. He reached down and picked up the worn velvet rabbit Leah had dropped on the floor. As he lifted it by one ear, I noticed a jagged line of clumsy white thread along its stomach—stitching that clearly didn’t come from a factory.
"We’re leaving," Damian told me, pulling off his tailored cashmere coat and draping it over my trembling shoulders—mostly to hide the blood seeping through the knees of my jeans. "Out the back. Now."
Ten minutes later, we were inside the back of his armored SUV, parked in a secluded overlook above the harbor. Rain drummed against the tinted glass. Leah had fallen into an exhausted sleep against my chest, refusing to let go of my collar even in her dreams.
Damian sat across from me on the leather bench. "Tell me about Zurich," he demanded quietly. "Every detail."
"It was the St. Jude Private Clinic," I said, my voice shaking. "October eighteenth, two years ago. I was twenty-two, alone, and terrified. My husband, Julian, had died in a construction collapse four months earlier. I went into labor during a snowstorm. They gave me something through my IV for the pain, and when I woke up the next morning, a doctor told me her heart had stopped during delivery."
Damian’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered in his cheek. "Wait. Did you say St. Jude Clinic? On the lake?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because my wife, Elena, gave birth at that exact clinic on October eighteenth," Damian said, his voice dropping an octave. "Except Elena didn’t survive the delivery. And when they handed me my daughter, I never left that building without her."
My stomach plummeted. If Elena had given birth to Leah that same night, then Leah couldn't be mine. I had just let grief turn me into a fool. "Then... then it’s a coincidence," I stammered, tears spilling over my lashes. "She just missed a mother, and my lotion—"
"It’s not the lotion," Damian interrupted sharply. He held up the worn velvet rabbit. "Elena hated stuffed animals. She called them dust collectors. This rabbit was already tucked into Leah’s bassinet when the head nurse brought her to me after Elena died. And look at the stitching on the belly."
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small titanium pocketknife, and carefully sliced through the thick white thread on the rabbit’s stomach.
I gasped. "Don't ruin her toy!"
"Feel inside," he commanded, holding the parted fabric toward me.
Hesitating, I slipped two fingers into the cotton stuffing. My fingertips brushed against cool, beaded metal. Slowly, I pulled it out into the dim amber light of the SUV.
It was a delicate silver rosary with pale rose-quartz beads. Attached to the centerpiece was a tiny silver medal engraved with the name Saint Clara—and on the back, the initials C.V.
My breathing stopped completely.
"That’s mine," I whispered, the world tilting on its axis. "My grandmother gave this to me before she died. I was holding it in the delivery room in Zurich before the anesthesia knocked me out."
Damian stared at the silver beads, his knuckles turning white around the velvet rabbit. If my rosary was sewn inside the toy that came out of the hospital with his daughter, then the baby in my arms wasn't Elena's child. She was mine.
"Who was your doctor?" Damian asked, his voice deadlier than any threat. "Give me a name."
"I only remember the woman who paid for my room after my husband died," I said, looking up at him. "A wealthy charity patron who visited me every week of my last trimester. She said her name was Sister Margaret, and she wore a gold family crest ring—a hawk holding an olive branch."
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Damian went completely still. Slowly, he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a heavy gold signet ring, and held it toward the light. A hawk holding an olive branch.
"That isn’t a charity crest," Damian said, his eyes dark with horror. "That’s the Caruso family seal. And the woman who took care of you wasn't a nun. That was my mother."
