Chapter 3 - The Man Who Signed Away a Baby
Victor's smile was the first thing I wanted to destroy. Not his wealth, not his expensive suit, not even the power he carried into every room. Just that smile, the one he wore while looking at a woman whose childhood he might have stolen.
Roman released his wrist and pointed toward a chair. “Sit.”
“Careful, nephew,” Victor said. “You have spent twenty years building what your father left you. You don't want to lose it over a recording.”
“Sit.”
Victor sat. I stayed near the door, with the ledger pressed against my ribs. My hands were shaking, but I refused to let him see.
Roman called his attorney, Miriam Shaw, and instructed her to come immediately. Then he called the head of his private security team and ordered a complete audit of the estate's entrances, accounts, and communication systems. He did not order anyone to hurt Victor. Somehow, that restraint made his anger feel more dangerous.
“Did you take my daughter?” Roman asked.
Victor crossed one ankle over the other. “I protected the family.”
“That's not an answer.”
“It's the only answer that matters.”
I stepped forward. “I grew up afraid of sirens. Isabella taught me to sleep with my shoes beside the bed because she said we might have to leave in the middle of the night. Was that your protection?”
Victor's eyes flickered. “You don't understand the circumstances.”
“Then explain them.”
He studied me for a long moment. “Your birth mother wanted to testify against several men who were useful to us. She was going to take the baby and disappear. Your grandfather thought that would endanger the family.”
Roman gripped the desk. “My father ordered this?”
“Your father ordered the child secured. I made sure she lived.”
I felt sick. He spoke about me the way someone might discuss moving a valuable painting into storage.
“What happened to Sofia?” I asked.
Victor looked away. “The fire was an unfortunate consequence.”
Roman took one step toward him. I spoke before he could take another.
“Don't,” I said. “If you hurt him, he becomes the story. I want the truth to be the story.”
Roman stopped. For the first time, I saw him make a choice because I had asked him to.
Miriam arrived twenty minutes later, a composed woman in her fifties with short silver hair and a leather briefcase. She listened to the recording and studied the ledger. Then she advised Roman to preserve every piece of evidence and involve independent law enforcement.
Victor laughed. “You'd invite investigators into this house?”
“Yes,” Roman said. “For her.”
The words should have reassured me. Instead I felt the weight of a decision I had not made. I wasn't ready to call him my father. I wasn't even ready to believe it.
Miriam arranged a same-day DNA collection at a hospital with independent identification and documented handling of the samples. I agreed, on the condition that Daniel drive me and Roman travel separately. Nobody objected.
As Daniel and I crossed the courtyard, he glanced at my bare feet. “You know, most people use the front door when they change their lives.”
I looked down. I'd forgotten my shoes in the stable. “Apparently I prefer a dramatic entrance.”
He smiled, but it faded when we reached his truck. A white envelope lay beneath the windshield wiper. Inside was a photograph of me at twelve years old, standing outside our rented house in Milwaukee. On the back someone had written: SHE WAS NEVER OUT OF OUR SIGHT.
Daniel looked toward the tree line. “Get in. Lock the doors.”
He called Roman while I stared at the photograph. The image had been taken the summer Isabella taught me to swim. I remembered feeling safe that day. Now I knew someone had been watching from across the street.
At the hospital, the technician took our samples in separate rooms. Roman waited at the far end of the hallway, giving me space. When I emerged, he stood and held out a paper cup of tea.
“How did you know I like tea?” I asked.
“I didn't. I bought coffee too.”
It was such an ordinary answer that my eyes burned.
“I'm not promising anything,” I told him.
“Neither am I. Except that I won't lie to you.”
The laboratory would take forty-eight hours. I returned to the estate feeling as if my life had been placed on a shelf until someone could read a number.
That night Daniel helped me check Shadow's stall. A fresh scrape marked the stable door, and one feed sack had been replaced. Shadow refused to approach his trough.
“He's telling us something,” I said.
Daniel smelled the feed, then sealed a sample without touching it directly. “I'll have this tested.”
A message arrived on my phone from an unknown number: YOUR MOTHER DIED BECAUSE SHE TRUSTED A DELUCA. DON'T MAKE HER MISTAKE.
I showed Daniel. He did not tell me to be brave. He simply stood beside me while I called Miriam.
Minutes later the estate alarm sounded. Guards rushed toward the west gate. In the confusion, someone cut the lights to the stable.
I heard Shadow strike the stall wall, once, hard. Then a man's voice whispered from the darkness.
“Elena. Isabella sent me.”
I knew that voice.
It belonged to Marco, the security chief who had disappeared that morning.
May you like
He stepped into the emergency light with blood on his sleeve and a flash drive in his hand.
“Your mother is alive,” he said. “But Victor knows where she's hiding. And if we don't move before midnight, he'll finish what he started twenty-four years ago.”
