Chapter 7 - The Attorney Who Had Kept the First SecretRebecca Sloan had spent twenty years teaching Dominic Caruso that panic was expensive.
Now she was panicking.
Dominic followed her into the corridor.
"What happened at Saint Catherine's?"
Rebecca stopped beside a window.
"Not here."
"Rebecca."
She looked toward the nurse's station.
"Your father needs medical care. And you need to understand that what I'm about to tell you could destroy the last remaining pieces of your family."
Dominic stepped closer.
"Those pieces are already destroyed."
Rebecca closed her eyes.
"Twenty-nine years ago, your mother gave birth to a daughter."
The corridor seemed to move beneath him.
"No."
"Yes."
"My mother had two sons."
"That's what you were told."
Dominic stared at her.
Rebecca continued carefully.
"The baby was born prematurely. There were complications. Your father told your mother the child had died."
Dominic's voice became dangerous.
"Did she?"
"No."
"Where is she?"
Rebecca swallowed.
"I don't know."
He laughed once.
A bitter, disbelieving sound.
"You're telling me I've had a sister for twenty-nine years and nobody bothered to mention her?"
"Your father believed she was in danger."
"From whom?"
"Vincent."
Dominic stared.
Rebecca took a breath.
"Your father was already trying to separate legitimate company assets from the criminal organization. Vincent believed another heir would complicate his control. When the child was born, Salvatore arranged a private adoption."
"Why tell my mother she died?"
"Because he believed she might be pressured into revealing where the child was."
Dominic turned away.
His mother had died seven years earlier.
For the last decade of her life, she had kept a tiny pink blanket in a cedar chest.
Dominic remembered finding it after her funeral.
He had assumed it belonged to a relative.
Now he understood.
"Did my mother ever learn the truth?"
Rebecca looked down.
"I don't know."
Dominic turned back.
"How long have you known?"
"Since shortly before your father's supposed death."
"And you never told me?"
"I was bound by a confidential legal arrangement."
"My mother died grieving a child who was alive."
Rebecca's eyes filled.
"I know."
Dominic's voice rose.
"You watched me bury my father. You watched me bury Julian. And you kept lying."
"I didn't know Salvatore was alive."
"But you knew about my sister."
"Yes."
He stepped away.
For the first time in twenty years, he could not bear to look at her.
"You're off the case."
Rebecca nodded.
"I understand."
"Give Marcus every file."
"I will."
Dominic started toward his father's room.
Rebecca called after him.
"Dominic."
He stopped.
"Julian found out about the adoption."
He turned slowly.
"When?"
"About a month before the crash."
Dominic stared.
"Did he find her?"
Rebecca hesitated.
"I think he was close."
That afternoon, Dominic returned to Manhattan.
Hannah met him at the secure apartment.
Grace was asleep in a stroller beside the couch.
Hannah took one look at his face.
"What happened?"
Dominic sat down.
"My father's alive."
Hannah covered her mouth.
"And Julian?"
He looked at Grace.
"I don't know."
Hannah lowered herself into the chair opposite him.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then she said, "You look like you haven't slept in a week."
"I haven't."
"Have you eaten?"
He shook his head.
She went into the kitchen.
When she returned, she carried a plate of scrambled eggs and toast.
Dominic stared at it.
"What is this?"
"Food."
"I can see that."
"Then eat it."
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Hannah sat across from him.
"Julian used to do that."
"What?"
"Forget to eat when he was scared."
Dominic looked up.
"Julian wasn't scared of anything."
Hannah shook her head.
"He was scared all the time. He just didn't want you to know."
The words hurt more than Dominic expected.
She continued.
"He talked about you constantly. How you taught him to ride a bike. How you fought three older boys who stole his sneakers. How you gave him your coat when he forgot his during a snowstorm."
Dominic stared at his plate.
"He never told me any of that mattered."
"He thought you knew."
A long silence followed.
Then Hannah said something that changed the way Dominic saw his brother.
"Julian didn't hate you. He was trying to save you."
Dominic looked at her.
"From Vincent?"
"From becoming your father."
He felt the words settle.
Hannah reached into her bag.
"I found something else."
She placed a small notebook on the table.
Its cover was stained with coffee.
"Julian kept this at my apartment. I couldn't read most of it. It's numbers, initials, dates."
Dominic opened it.
The first pages contained shipping references.
Then bank accounts.
Then names.
Near the center, one name appeared repeatedly.
E. REED.
Dominic looked at Hannah.
"Is this you?"
She leaned forward.
"No."
"Your initial is H."
"I know."
He turned the page.
A date.
Twenty-nine years earlier.
Saint Catherine's Hospital.
A private adoption reference.
Then a name.
Eleanor Reed.
Hannah went completely still.
Dominic looked up.
"What?"
She stared at the page.
"That's my mother's name."
Dominic's breath caught.
"Your mother?"
"She died when I was sixteen."
"Was she adopted?"
Hannah nodded slowly.
"She never knew her birth parents."
Dominic looked back at the date.
Eleanor Reed would have been forty-nine if she were alive.
Too old to be the daughter born twenty-nine years ago.
The dates did not match.
But then he saw a notation beneath her name.
GUARDIAN — NOT PARENT.
Hannah covered her mouth.
Dominic turned another page.
There was a second name.
Hannah Elizabeth Reed.
Date of birth.
Twenty-nine years earlier.
Saint Catherine's Hospital.
Dominic stared at her.
Hannah stared back.
And suddenly the room felt much too small.
"My mother always said I was born at County General," Hannah whispered.
Dominic looked at Grace sleeping peacefully.
Then at the woman who had worked in his house for two years.
The woman Julian had loved.
The woman who might be the sister he never knew existed.
A cold realization struck him.
If Hannah was Salvatore Caruso's missing daughter, then Julian had fallen in love with his own biological sister.
Dominic stood so abruptly that the chair scraped across the floor.
"No."
Hannah looked terrified.
"What?"
He stared at the notebook.
"No. Something is wrong."
Because Julian had known about the adoption.
And Julian had known Hannah.
May you like
Which meant either the records were false—
Or someone had built a lie so monstrous that every member of the Caruso family had been living inside it.
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