Chapter 9 - The Daughter in the Missing RecordBy dawn, Ellie had learned three things.
The first was that the woman who looked like her had disappeared without leaving a usable trail.
The second was that Luca had not slept for a single minute.
The third was that there were now two people in the world who could make her feel like a stranger in her own life.
One was the woman in the footage.
The other was the man who had fathered her child.
Luca stood by the penthouse windows, speaking quietly into his phone. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and dark shadows sat beneath his eyes. Every few minutes, he looked toward the door as if expecting someone to enter carrying the answer to everything.
Ellie sat at the kitchen island with a mug of tea she had barely touched.
She had called Emma at six in the morning.
Her sister had answered on the second ring, sounding sleepy and immediately alarmed.
“Ellie? What happened?”
“Nothing has happened to me.”
“That is not the same as saying nothing happened.”
Ellie had closed her eyes.
“I’m safe. I promise.”
“Are you with Luca?”
“Yes.”
“Is he behaving like a normal human being, or has he locked you in a tower and threatened to shoot the first person who brings you a croissant?”
Despite everything, Ellie had laughed.
“He’s trying.”
“Trying what?”
“To be better.”
Emma had been quiet for a moment.
“And are you letting him?”
“I’m letting him try. That’s not the same as trusting him with everything.”
“Good. Keep that distinction.”
Ellie had promised to call again later. She had not told Emma about the woman who wore her face. She could not bear to hear her sister say what Ellie herself had begun to fear.
What if the woman was not an impostor?
What if she was family?
At seven thirty, Gabriel arrived with a folder of documents and the exhausted expression of a man who had spent the night bargaining with his own conscience.
Luca ended his call.
“What did you find?”
“Her name may be Sofia Bellini.”
Ellie looked up sharply.
“May be?”
“It’s the name on an old clinic intake form. The photograph attached to the file is missing, but the birth date matches the date of your birth.”
Luca took the folder.
“Where did you get this?”
“From a private archive that belonged to Adriano.”
“You said those records were destroyed.”
“I said I believed they were.”
“That distinction is becoming very expensive.”
Gabriel accepted the anger without protest.
Ellie opened the folder before Luca could turn it into another argument.
The first page was a medical form from a private maternity clinic in northern Italy. Most of the information had been blacked out, but a handwritten note remained near the bottom.
Female infant. Transfer authorized. Identity to remain sealed until further instruction.
Below it was a date.
Ellie’s birthday.
Her fingers began to tremble.
“There were two births,” she said. “You told us that.”
“Yes.”
“Was Sofia born before me or after me?”
“The records don’t say.”
“Then this proves nothing.”
“No,” Gabriel admitted. “It proves someone created a second identity. It doesn’t prove who she was.”
Luca flipped to the next page.
It contained a photocopy of a handwritten letter, the ink faded to brown.
The first line was in Elena’s handwriting.
Isabella, if they tell you the girl died, do not believe them.
Ellie stopped breathing.
She knew her mother’s handwriting. She had seen it on birthday cards, in recipes, on the notes Elena used to leave beside the kitchen sink. Even after death, a person could return in the familiar curve of a letter.
She read on.
There were two girls in that room. One was mine to protect. The other was someone else’s to claim. I do not know which name they will give them, and I no longer trust the doctors to tell the truth.
The letter ended abruptly.
No signature. No explanation.
Just one line beneath the final paragraph.
If the first child belongs to the dawn, then the second belongs to the night.
Ellie stared at the words.
“The phrase,” she whispered.
Luca nodded.
“My father’s phrase.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “Your father took it from Elena.”
Both of them turned toward him.
Gabriel sat down slowly.
“Adriano was not the first person to use those words. Elena wrote them in a letter years before she met him. It was something her grandmother used to say. A family saying.”
“So the woman in the estate knew it because she’s related to my mother?” Ellie asked.
“Possibly.”
“Or because someone showed her the letter.”
“Yes.”
Luca placed the papers on the counter.
“Who was Sofia Bellini?”
Gabriel hesitated.
“I think she may have been Elena’s younger sister.”
Ellie went completely still.
“My mother had a sister?”
“I never knew her well. Elena rarely spoke about her family. She told me she had lost contact with them after leaving Italy.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Perhaps she thought it would put you in danger. Perhaps she believed her sister was dead. Or perhaps she was protecting you from something that had begun long before your birth.”
Ellie pushed the folder away.
Her mother had died believing that secrets were a kind of shield. She had left Ellie with a loving father, a sister who adored her, and enough unanswered questions to fill a lifetime.
Now the past was opening like a wound.
“I want to see the original clinic,” Ellie said.
Luca shook his head. “We don’t know if it still exists.”
“Then we find out.”
“It may be dangerous.”
“Everything is dangerous.”
“Ellie—”
“No. Listen to me.” Her voice shook, but she kept going. “I have spent my entire life being told what I can’t know because someone thought they were protecting me. My mother made choices for me. Gabriel made choices for me. Your father made choices for me before I was even born. I will not spend the rest of my life waiting for powerful men to decide which truth I’m allowed to hear.”
Luca’s expression changed.
He looked at her not as a woman who needed protection, but as someone standing at the edge of a decision that belonged entirely to her.
“All right,” he said.
She blinked.
“All right?”
“We find the clinic.”
“And if the records lead somewhere dangerous?”
“We decide what to do together.”
She studied him, searching for the old command beneath the agreement.
It wasn’t there.
“Thank you,” she said.
He gave her a tired smile.
“You can thank me by letting me come with you.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you can remember that you’re accompanying me, not escorting a prisoner.”
“I’ll try to restrain my criminal instincts.”
“Start with the word try.”
For the first time that morning, he laughed.
The sound was quiet, but real.
Then the elevator doors opened.
Isabella stepped into the room, carrying a small velvet box.
She looked as if she had aged ten years overnight.
“I know where the clinic was,” she said.
Gabriel rose.
“Isabella—”
“I know where it was,” she repeated. “And I know why the records were changed.”
She placed the box on the counter.
Inside lay a gold locket, a photograph, and a folded sheet of paper.
The photograph showed two young women standing on a beach. One was Elena. The other looked almost exactly like the woman in the security footage.
Ellie touched the photograph with one fingertip.
“Is that Sofia?”
“Yes,” Isabella said. “Elena’s younger sister.”
“Why does she look my age?”
“She was younger than Elena by only two years. If she is alive, she should be in her late forties.”
Ellie frowned.
“Then the woman in the footage wasn’t her.”
“No,” Isabella whispered. “It was her daughter.”
The room fell silent.
Luca picked up the folded paper.
It was a birth record, stamped by the same clinic.
Mother: Sofia Bellini.
Child: Female.
Name: Sealed by court order.
Father: Unknown.
At the bottom, in a different hand, someone had written:
Identity transferred to protect the legitimate heir.
Ellie’s mouth went dry.
“Legitimate heir to what?”
Isabella looked at Luca.
“The trust.”
Luca’s face hardened.
“The trust attached to Ellie’s birth record.”
“Yes.”
“Who controls it now?”
“No one,” Isabella replied. “Not legally. The trust was frozen when the registry disappeared.”
“And Victor wants it.”
“He wants more than money. If he can prove that Ellie’s identity was falsified, he can challenge the entire chain of inheritance. He could dismantle the Moretti family’s holdings and expose every person who profited from the fraud.”
Gabriel’s voice was low.
“He could also prove that Elias was removed from the family under false pretenses.”
Luca looked at the photograph of the two sisters.
“Where is Sofia?”
Isabella swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Ellie studied the picture. Her mother’s face was younger than she had ever seen it, unlined by grief, her smile wide and unguarded. Beside her, Sofia wore the same expression Ellie had seen in the security footage.
Not identical features alone.
A familiar way of tilting her head. A small crease beside her mouth.
The resemblance was impossible to ignore.
“If Sofia had a daughter,” Ellie said slowly, “then the woman who looks like me might be my cousin.”
“Or someone pretending to be,” Luca said.
Ellie glanced at him.
“You really don’t want this to be true.”
“I don’t want you to discover that everyone you love has been hiding a different version of your life.”
She looked back at the photograph.
“That already happened.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Luca’s phone rang.
He answered, listened, and grew very still.
“What is it?” Ellie asked when he ended the call.
“Victor has contacted Matteo.”
“What does he want?”
Luca looked at her.
“He says he has Elias.”
Ellie’s heart slammed against her ribs.
“Alive?”
“He says he can prove it.”
“And the registry?”
“He’s willing to exchange both for one thing.”
“What?”
Luca’s gaze dropped to the documents.
“He wants Ellie’s signature.”
“On what?”
“A declaration giving up every claim to the trust.”
Ellie stared at him.
“And if I refuse?”
Luca’s voice was almost inaudible.
“He says Elias dies, and the truth about your mother dies with him.”
Ellie looked at the photograph one final time.
Two sisters.
Two babies.
One missing boy.
A lifetime of lies.
She closed the velvet box.
“Tell Victor I’ll sign.”
Luca’s head snapped toward her.
“No.”
“I said I’ll sign. I didn’t say I’d sign whatever he puts in front of me.”
“Ellie, he could be lying about Elias.”
“Then we find out.”
“And if this is a trap?”
“Then we plan for it.”
He stared at her, and she could see the old instinct rising—the desire to take the decision from her hands and carry it himself.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he reached for her hand.
“Then we plan together.”
Ellie squeezed his fingers.
“Together.”
Neither of them noticed the second phone vibrating inside the velvet box.
Neither noticed the message appearing on its cracked screen.
May you like
She has agreed. Bring her to the clinic.
The original daughter must die before the registry is opened.
