Chapter 8 - Bianca’s Real Name
Alessandro moved before I could process what I was seeing.
“Bianca?”
She was crying.
Not elegantly.
Not like a woman in a magazine.
Like a daughter who had spent twenty-five years borrowing someone else’s name.
“My name was Grace Carter for nineteen years,” she said.
Alessandro stared at her.
“No.”
“I found out when I was seventeen.”
“No.”
“Alessandro—”
“No.”
His voice cracked.
Bianca flinched.
I had never seen Alessandro retreat from anyone.
He retreated from her.
“You knew?”
“Not at first.”
“How long?”
“Thirteen years.”
“You stood beside me for thirteen years.”
“I was trying to survive.”
“You let me believe you were dead.”
“I didn’t know you thought I existed!”
That silenced him.
Bianca’s biological identity had been hidden so completely that even she had believed she was Grace Carter.
At seventeen, she found Rebecca Bellamy’s letters among her adoptive mother’s belongings.
At nineteen, someone tried to kill her.
The staged accident followed.
The De Luca family, old allies of Sofia, gave her a new identity.
Bianca De Luca.
“Why come back?” I asked.
“To find out who killed our mother.”
Alessandro stared at her.
“Our.”
The word destroyed something inside him.
Then rebuilt it.
Slowly.
Painfully.
He walked toward her.
Bianca’s chin trembled.
“If you hate me, I understand.”
Alessandro pulled her into his arms.
She made a broken sound.
He held her tighter.
“I don’t hate you.”
I turned away because some reunions deserved privacy.
Later, Bianca explained the leak from Liam’s IP address.
She had used an old access tunnel Liam created years earlier.
“You leaked my pregnancy?”
Her face reddened.
“No. I leaked that Alessandro had a mystery woman.”
“That is not significantly better.”
“I needed to force the person watching Vitali media traffic to react.”
Alessandro looked murderous.
“You used Elizabeth as bait.”
“I didn’t know she was pregnant.”
“You still used her.”
“I know.”
Bianca looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
I believed her.
Alessandro did not forgive as quickly.
That night he stood alone on the balcony.
I joined him.
“You found your sister.”
“I found thirteen years of lies.”
“She was scared.”
“So was I.”
There it was.
Not anger.
Abandonment.
Everyone Alessandro loved seemed to disappear.
His mother.
His father, despite everything.
His sister.
And perhaps that was why he held too tightly when something mattered.
He wasn’t trying to possess love.
He was trying to prevent it from leaving.
“I’m not disappearing,” I said.
He looked at me.
“You can’t promise that.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“But I can promise I won’t make the decision for you.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“That is a dangerous thing to tell a man like me.”
“Why?”
“Because I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you stay.”
My heartbeat stumbled.
“With security guards?”
“Flowers.”
“Worse.”
“Breakfast.”
“Threatening.”
“Marriage.”
I stopped breathing.
Alessandro looked almost startled by his own word.
I whispered, “Was that a proposal?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“It will be better.”
I laughed.
He kissed my forehead.
Then his phone rang.
Marco.
They had identified the person controlling ORPHEUS.
Not Matteo.
Not Vittorio.
Not anyone currently employed by Vitali Holdings.
The authorization signature belonged to Rebecca Bellamy.
My mother.
I stared at the documents.
“That’s impossible.”
Bianca looked uneasy.
“Elizabeth…”
“My mother was a school librarian.”
“No,” Alessandro said gently.
“She wasn’t.”
More files appeared.
Rebecca Bellamy had worked for the Treasury Department before I was born.
Financial crimes.
Deep-cover investigations.
My entire childhood had been built on a carefully constructed lie.
Then Marco found the most recent ORPHEUS authorization.
Dated three days earlier.
Signed with Rebecca’s biometric key.
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“My mother has been dead for four years.”
Nobody answered.
That was when Alessandro’s private phone rang.
He answered.
A woman spoke.
I watched every muscle in his body lock.
Then he handed me the phone.
“Who is it?”
His voice was barely audible.
“Your mother.”
I pressed the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
For four years, I had dreamed of hearing Rebecca Bellamy’s voice again.
Now it came through perfectly.
“Elizabeth.”
My knees gave out.
Alessandro caught me.
May you like
Then my dead mother whispered:
“Sweetheart, you need to get away from Alessandro before he learns what his father did to you.”
