Chapter 2 - The Six-Year Lie
By midnight, I had twenty-seven people searching for Daniel Rourke.
By one in the morning, his office was empty.
By two, his house was empty.
By three, his private plane had been moved from a Chicago airport to a small airfield in Indiana.
Daniel Rourke had disappeared.
That confirmed something I had already suspected.
He was afraid.
The next morning, I returned to St. Margaret's.
Sophia was waiting by the front window.
She saw my car.
She ran outside before security could stop her.
“Daddy!”
I opened the car door.
She threw herself into my arms.
For a man who had spent twenty-five years convincing himself that emotional attachment was weakness, the feeling was almost unbearable.
I held her carefully.
She smelled like strawberry shampoo and crayons.
“Are you really my daddy?”
I closed my eyes.
“Yes.”
She pulled back.
“Then why didn't you come?”
That question nearly destroyed me.
“I didn't know where you were.”
“Mommy said you knew.”
“She was wrong.”
Sophia studied my face.
“Are you mad at Mommy?”
I hesitated.
“I don't know.”
She nodded as if that answer made sense.
Then she whispered:
“Mommy was scared.”
“Of me?”
She shook her head.
“Of people.”
“What people?”
“Men who came to our house.”
My entire body went cold.
“Tell me about them.”
Sophia looked around.
“Mommy said not to talk about them.”
“You can tell me.”
“She said if they found us, they would take me away.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“Did they hurt your mother?”
Sophia looked down.
“Sometimes Mommy cried.”
I wanted to ask more.
But she was seven.
Not a witness.
Not evidence.
A child who had already lost six years with her father.
So I stopped.
“Okay.”
She smiled faintly.
“Can I come home?”
The question stunned me.
“Do you want to?”
She nodded.
“Wherever you are.”
That answer stayed with me.
I arranged for Sophia to remain at St. Margaret's temporarily while lawyers began the emergency custody process.
I wanted her in my home immediately.
But my attorney warned me against moving too fast.
“You're dealing with a complicated guardianship history,” Elena Vargas told me.
“I don't care.”
“You should.”
She placed the intake documents on my desk.
“There are signatures here from people connected to your family.”
“Who?”
She pointed.
“My father's estate attorney.”
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
I stared at the signature.
My father had died seven years ago.
One year before Alina vanished.
“Why would my father be involved?”
Elena looked at me.
“That's what we need to find out.”
Then she pointed to another document.
“There's more.”
The document was a medical authorization.
It listed Sophia's blood type.
My blood type.
Alina's blood type.
And a note.
Genetic condition monitored through paternal family.
I read it twice.
“What condition?”
“We don't know yet.”
My stomach tightened.
My family had a history of a rare cardiac condition.
My father had died from it.
My younger brother had died at seventeen.
I had been tested at thirty.
Negative.
“Why would Sophia be monitored for it?”
Elena didn't answer.
Because she didn't need to.
Someone had known.
Someone had known my daughter was alive.
Someone had known she was mine.
Someone had deliberately hidden her.
Then my phone rang.
Nico.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“We found Rourke's car.”
“Where?”
“Indiana.”
“Driver?”
“Dead.”
I stood.
“What happened?”
“Single gunshot.”
“Rourke?”
“No.”
“The driver.”
“Rourke's missing.”
I looked toward the window.
Rain had begun falling over Chicago.
“Search hospitals.”
“We are.”
“Find him.”
There was a pause.
“Sir?”
“What?”
“You should know something else.”
“What?”
“The car had a second set of fingerprints.”
“Whose?”
Nico's voice became quieter.
“Alina's.”
I stopped breathing.
Alina was alive.
Or at least she had been recently.
That night, I sat alone in my study with six years of unanswered questions spread across the table.
At 2:11 a.m., I found something buried inside an old folder.
A photograph.
Alina and me.
Taken three months before she disappeared.
She was pregnant.
I stared at her face.
I had forgotten the photograph existed.
But there was something wrong.
Alina wasn't looking at the camera.
She was looking at someone standing behind it.
My father.
And beside him stood Daniel Rourke.
On the back of the photograph, Alina had written:
If anything happens to me, ask what your father knew.
I read the sentence again.
Then again.
My father had always told me he wanted to protect our family.
I had believed him.
But perhaps he had been protecting the family from me.
At sunrise, Elena arrived.
She placed a new folder on the table.
“Marco.”
“What?”
“This came from a sealed court archive.”
I opened it.
My hands froze.
It was a guardianship petition filed six years earlier.
The petitioner wasn't Alina.
It wasn't Daniel.
It wasn't St. Margaret's.
It was my father.
Alessandro Vitelli.
Filed eleven days before his death.
Requesting emergency protection for his granddaughter.
Sophia.
I looked at Elena.
“My father knew she existed.”
“Yes.”
“And he knew someone was trying to take her.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't he tell me?”
Elena's expression was grim.
“Because someone convinced him you were the danger.”
I looked at the signature.
My father's.
Then at the final page.
There was one handwritten sentence.
Marco must never know the child exists until the threat is gone.
I leaned back.
Six years ago, my father had believed hiding my daughter from me would save her.
But he had died.
Alina had disappeared.
And Sophia had grown up without either of us.
I closed the file.
“Find out who threatened my father.”
Elena nodded.
Then my phone rang again.
This time it was a number I didn't recognize.
I answered.
A woman's voice whispered:
“Marco?”
I knew that voice.
I had heard it in my dreams for six years.
“Alina?”
Silence.
Then she said:
May you like
“Don't bring Sophia home.”
The call ended.
