Chapter 6 - THE DAUGHTER THEY STOLE
I stared at the photograph until the letters blurred.
Costa.
“No.”
Roman said nothing.
“That isn’t real.”
“We don’t know.”
“My father is Thomas Miller.”
Roman’s expression tightened.
“Then we verify it.”
I called my mother.
She didn’t answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Roman drove me to Connecticut himself.
By the time we reached the Miller estate, police tape covered the shattered study window.
Mom was packing.
Suitcases stood in the foyer.
She froze when she saw me.
One look at my face and she knew.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Her shoulders collapsed.
“Sadie—”
“Who is my father?”
Roman remained behind me.
Mom looked at him.
Then she started crying.
I had spent my entire childhood watching Cynthia Miller cry quietly after arguments.
This time, I felt nothing.
“Tell me.”
“His name was Anthony Costa.”
Roman inhaled sharply.
I looked at him.
“You knew him?”
“My uncle.”
The floor seemed to tilt.
Mom sat down.
Twenty-four years of lies came apart in fifteen minutes.
Before Thomas Miller, my mother had loved Anthony Costa.
He was Roman’s father’s younger brother.
Anthony wanted nothing to do with the violent side of his family’s business. He studied architecture, started a small construction company, and fell in love with Cynthia Walker.
Then she became pregnant.
Anthony intended to marry her.
Thomas Miller was his business partner.
Three weeks before my birth, Anthony died in what police called a construction accident.
Thomas married my mother eight months later.
He put his name on my birth certificate.
“Why?” I whispered.
Mom wiped her face.
“Because I was terrified. I had no money. Anthony was gone. Thomas promised to take care of us.”
“Did he?”
She looked down.
That was answer enough.
“Did Roman’s family know?”
“No. Thomas said the Costas were dangerous. He said they would take you.”
Roman’s jaw clenched.
“Anthony had left the organization years earlier.”
Mom looked at him.
“I know that now.”
I stared at her.
“So Thomas spent twenty-four years treating me like something he regretted because I wasn’t his.”
“He resented Anthony.”
“And you let him take that out on me.”
Her face crumpled.
That hurt.
But it did not change the truth.
Then another thought hit me.
“Gregory.”
“He’s Thomas’s.”
Of course.
The real son.
The heir.
The child who received everything.
Suddenly my entire childhood made horrible sense.
Roman stepped closer.
“There’s something else.”
Mom stiffened.
He noticed.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Cynthia.”
“I promised Anthony.”
My pulse accelerated.
“Promised him what?”
She stood and walked toward the study.
Behind a row of books, she removed a small key.
Dad had kept a private safe behind a painting for as long as I could remember.
Mom opened it.
Inside were property deeds, passports, cash, and a sealed envelope.
My name was written across it.
Not Sadie Miller.
Sadie Costa.
My hands began shaking.
Inside was a letter.
Anthony had written it before I was born.
He described buying land along the Connecticut coast.
He wanted to build homes there.
Not luxury towers.
Affordable houses for working families.
He had placed the property into a trust for his unborn daughter.
Me.
The land was now worth nearly forty million dollars.
I looked at Mom.
“Where is it?”
“Thomas controls the trust.”
Roman swore under his breath.
Everything clicked.
Victor Hale didn’t want me because I had found the accounts.
He wanted the land.
A massive redevelopment project was being planned near the waterfront.
Hale needed my property to complete it.
Thomas had probably promised it to him.
But legally, once I turned twenty-five in six months, control of the trust transferred to me.
“Dad borrowed money against land that wasn’t his,” I whispered.
Mom nodded.
I laughed.
It sounded broken.
“He offered me because he needed Roman to control me.”
Roman’s eyes hardened.
My father had not panicked randomly.
He had calculated.
Again.
Roman’s phone rang.
His security chief.
They had located Gregory.
This time, genuinely.
An abandoned hotel outside New Haven.
Roman looked at me.
“You stay here.”
I almost argued.
Then I remembered the warehouse.
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“I’m going.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I picked up my coat.
“I’m not staying here.”
Twenty minutes later, we were moving through the storm.
The hotel stood near the highway, half demolished.
Roman’s team entered from three sides.
We waited inside an armored SUV.
Then gunfire erupted.
My entire body went cold.
Roman reached for the door.
“Stay down.”
“Roman—”
“Please.”
It was the first time he had said that word to me.
I nodded.
He disappeared into the rain.
Ten minutes felt like ten years.
Then two men emerged carrying Gregory.
Alive.
I jumped from the SUV.
“Gregory!”
His face was swollen.
His hands were bound.
He saw me.
Then Roman.
Fear flooded his expression.
“No!”
I stopped.
“What?”
Gregory struggled against the men holding him.
“You have to get away from him!”
“Roman rescued you.”
“No, Sadie!”
He stared directly at me.
“You don’t understand.”
Roman approached.
Gregory’s voice cracked.
“Hale didn’t kill Anthony Costa.”
Silence.
Roman stopped.
Gregory swallowed.
“Dad did.”
I felt the world fall away.
“What?”
“Dad sabotaged the construction lift.”
Roman’s face became stone.
“How do you know?”
Gregory started crying.
“Because Hale showed me the original report.”
He looked at me.
“Thomas killed your real father, Sadie.”
I could barely hear him over the rain.
“Why?”
May you like
Gregory’s answer destroyed the last illusion I had left.
“Because Anthony discovered Thomas was stealing from their company.”
