Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE SERVICE HALL
The final page was not a contract.
It was a medical receipt.
I read it twice because my mind refused to understand what my eyes were seeing.
North Shore Women’s Medical Center.
Patient: Sophia Carter.
Date: four years earlier.
Prenatal examination.
Eleven weeks.
I looked at Enzo.
He looked away.
That was enough.
“You knew?”
“Dominic—”
“Did you know?”
His jaw tightened.
“Not then.”
“That's not what I asked.”
“I found out later.”
Something inside me went completely still.
Enzo had been with me since we were boys. He knew where bodies were buried, literally and otherwise. He had stood beside me at my father's funeral. He had dragged me from a burning warehouse when I was twenty-nine.
There were very few people I trusted.
That list had just become shorter.
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
I crossed the room before he finished speaking and shoved him against the bookcase.
“Two years?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Don't use my mother's words.”
His expression changed.
That told me something else.
Those had been her words.
I released him.
“Where is Sophia?”
“I don't know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I swear.”
Downstairs, the quartet began playing another Christmas song.
I could hear laughter.
Champagne glasses.
Applause.
My engagement party.
Suddenly the entire thing felt obscene.
I took the file and walked out.
“Dominic.”
Enzo followed.
“Think before you do this.”
“I've spent four years thinking.”
I descended the staircase.
My mother saw me immediately.
So did Isabella.
Victoria excused herself from a group of guests and approached me with the expression she'd worn through funerals, indictments, betrayals and my father's final hours.
Controlled.
“Not here,” she said.
I held up the medical receipt.
Her face lost color.
“Where is she?”
Victoria glanced around.
“Lower your voice.”
“Where is Sophia?”
Isabella appeared beside us.
“Dominic, what's happening?”
I looked at the woman I was supposed to marry.
For the first time, I wondered how much she knew.
“Did you know about Sophia?”
Isabella blinked.
“Your former girlfriend?”
“Did you know my mother paid her?”
Silence.
Not confusion.
Silence.
My stomach dropped.
“You knew.”
“Dominic, I knew there had been an arrangement. I didn't know the details.”
Victoria stepped between us.
“This conversation ends now.”
“No.”
My mother stared at me.
People nearby had begun watching.
I didn't care.
“Four years ago,” I said quietly, “Sophia was pregnant.”
Isabella's lips parted.
That reaction looked genuine.
Victoria's did not.
She already knew.
Then a child's cry came from the service corridor.
“Mommy!”
I turned.
Lily was running past two waiters.
A woman appeared at the end of the hallway.
She wore a black maid's uniform.
Her hair was pulled into a simple knot.
She was thinner than I remembered.
Older in ways four years shouldn't have been able to accomplish.
But I knew her.
I would have known her in darkness.
“Sophia.”
She froze.
Lily ran into her legs.
Sophia caught her daughter automatically, then looked over the child's head at me.
The room disappeared again.
Four years.
Four years of imagining what I would say if I found her.
Every accusation vanished.
All I could see was the fear on her face.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“Dominic.”
My name sounded broken in her voice.
I stepped closer.
Victoria caught my arm.
“Don't.”
I looked down at her hand.
My mother released me.
Sophia picked Lily up.
“We should go.”
“Go where?”
She didn't answer.
I looked at Lily.
Then at Sophia.
“How old is she?”
Sophia's eyes filled.
“Dominic.”
“How old?”
“Three.”
“When's her birthday?”
Sophia closed her eyes.
That was when I knew.
Not with certainty.
Not yet.
But somewhere beneath the anger and shock, I knew.
“March seventh,” she whispered.
I calculated backward without wanting to.
The last night Sophia and I had spent together had been in June.
I stared at Lily.
She was hiding her face against Sophia's neck.
“My God.”
“Please,” Sophia whispered. “Not in front of her.”
I looked at Victoria.
My mother stood ten feet away.
For the first time, she looked afraid of me.
“Did you know?”
Victoria said nothing.
Sophia tightened her hold on Lily.
“Dominic, don't.”
But I couldn't stop.
“Is she my daughter?”
A champagne glass shattered somewhere behind us.
Sophia looked at me for a long time.
Then she nodded.
Once.
The world I had spent thirty-eight years building cracked open beneath my feet.
I had a daughter.
A three-year-old daughter.
And she had been living somewhere in the world while I attended meetings, bought buildings, buried enemies, celebrated birthdays, and convinced myself Sophia had abandoned me.
I looked at Lily again.
She peeked at me over Sophia's shoulder.
Gray-green eyes.
My father's eyes.
My eyes.
I couldn't breathe.
I turned toward Victoria.
“You took four years from me.”
My mother lifted her chin.
“I saved your life.”
“You stole my child.”
“I protected this family.”
Sophia flinched.
I saw it.
And suddenly the question changed.
It wasn't only why Sophia had left.
It was what my mother had done to make her leave.
I stepped toward Victoria.
“What did you threaten her with?”
“Dominic,” Sophia said sharply.
I stopped.
She was staring at Lily.
Not here.
Not in front of the child.
I nodded.
“Enzo.”
He appeared immediately.
“Clear the west library. Nobody enters.”
Then I looked at the guests.
“Party's over.”
My mother stared at me.
“You cannot humiliate the Vitale family like this.”
I looked at Isabella.
Her face had gone pale.
“I think humiliation is the least of our problems.”
Isabella swallowed.
“Dominic, there is something else you need to know.”
Victoria turned sharply.
“Isabella.”
That single word told me everything.
Another secret.
Another arrangement.
Another piece of my life discussed in rooms where I wasn't present.
I stared at my fiancée.
“What?”
Isabella looked at Sophia.
Then at Lily.
Finally, she looked at me.
“Your mother didn't bring Sophia back into this house.”
A cold feeling moved through me.
“Then who did?”
May you like
Isabella whispered:
“I did.”
