Chapter 8 - THE CHILD WHO SHOULD NOT EXIST
Beatrice was still recovering when we confronted her.
She looked at the document.
Then closed her eyes.
“I wondered when this would surface.”
I nearly collapsed.
Dante moved toward his mother.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing to the embryo.”
“Your name is on the authorization.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because someone forged it.”
The room went silent.
Beatrice looked at me.
“Elena, I would never do that to you.”
“Then who did?”
“Victor.”
Dante shook his head.
“Why would Victor care about our fertility treatment?”
“He didn’t.”
Beatrice paused.
“Your father did.”
Dante stared at her.
“My father was dead by then.”
“Yes.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
Beatrice asked for a locked box from her home.
Nico brought it an hour later.
Inside were documents written years before Dante’s father died.
Carlo Caruso had created an inheritance structure.
If Dante died without children, control of several family holdings would pass to a group of trustees.
One trustee was Victor Salerno.
Dante read the page twice.
“Victor benefited if I had no heir.”
“Yes,” Beatrice said.
“But why alter our results instead of killing me?”
“Because killing you would trigger investigations. Keeping you childless required only corruption.”
My stomach turned.
The missing embryo remained unexplained.
Until Nico entered with news.
A former clinic technician had been located in New Jersey.
We drove there that night.
Her name was Melissa Crane.
She cried before we finished asking the first question.
“I didn’t know what they were doing.”
“Who?” Dante asked.
“A man named Salerno paid the clinic director to alter your records.”
“And the embryo?” I whispered.
Melissa looked at me.
“It wasn’t destroyed.”
My knees weakened.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know now.”
“What happened?”
“The director ordered me to prepare it for transfer.”
“To whom?”
“A surrogate.”
The room spun.
Dante caught my arm.
I barely felt him.
“Was a child born?”
Melissa began crying harder.
“Yes.”
The word tore through me.
Dante went completely still.
“Where?”
“I only know the surrogate’s first name. Anna.”
Nico started making calls.
It took thirty-six hours.
Thirty-six hours in which I did not sleep.
Thirty-six hours in which Dante barely left my side but never touched me without asking.
Finally, Nico found her.
Anna Mercer.
She had died eighteen months earlier from cancer.
But she had a daughter.
A four-year-old girl named Rose.
Rose lived with Anna’s sister in Connecticut.
I sat in the car outside their house unable to open the door.
Dante sat beside me.
“What if she isn’t ours?”
“Then we leave.”
“What if she is?”
He looked at the small house.
“Then we ask what’s best for her.”
Not what’s ours.
What’s best for her.
I looked at him.
That answer mattered.
Anna’s sister, Julia, knew only part of the story.
Anna had been paid to carry an embryo for an anonymous couple who supposedly changed their minds.
After Rose was born, the agency disappeared.
Anna raised her as her own.
“She loved Rose,” Julia said fiercely.
“I believe you,” I whispered.
Then Rose entered the room.
She had dark curls.
Large brown eyes.
And Dante’s unmistakable dimple.
My breath disappeared.
Dante looked like someone had struck him.
Rose held a stuffed rabbit.
“Who are they?”
Julia crouched.
“Friends.”
Rose looked at Dante.
“You’re really tall.”
Dante’s mouth trembled.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Are you a policeman?”
“No.”
“A doctor?”
“No.”
“What do you do?”
For perhaps the first time in his life, Dante Caruso had no answer to that question.
I laughed through tears.
Rose looked at me.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m happy to meet you.”
She considered this.
Then offered me her rabbit.
“You can hold Bunny if you’re sad.”
I took it.
“Thank you.”
DNA testing confirmed the truth three days later.
Rose was ours.
Biologically.
But emotionally, legally, practically—nothing was simple.
Julia had raised her for eighteen months.
Anna had been her mother.
We refused to rip her from the only stable home she remembered.
Instead, we began slowly.
Visits.
Lunches.
Trips to the park.
Dante became absurd around her.
The man who could terrify a boardroom allowed a four-year-old to put glitter clips in his hair.
One afternoon, Rose climbed onto his lap and asked, “Are you my dad?”
Silence filled the room.
Dante looked at Julia.
Then me.
Finally he said, “I’m your biological father.”
Rose frowned.
“What does bio-logical mean?”
“It means you came from Elena and me. But your mommy Anna loved you and raised you, and Aunt Julia takes care of you.”
Rose thought about that.
“So I have extra people?”
I covered my mouth.
Dante’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
And she returned to coloring.
Children sometimes solve with simplicity what adults destroy with ownership.
That evening, Dante and I stood outside.
“I don’t deserve this,” he said.
“Rose?”
“You. Her. Any of it.”
I looked at him.
“Deserving isn’t the question.”
“What is?”
“What you do next.”
His phone rang.
Nico.
Dante answered.
His expression hardened.
“They arrested Victor?”
A pause.
“What?”
He put the call on speaker.
Nico’s voice filled the car.
“Victor’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“His house is empty. Private jet never took off. Cars are still there.”
Dante looked toward me.
“Then where is he?”
Nico paused.
“We found a message.”
My stomach tightened.
“What message?”
“Three words.”
Dante waited.
May you like
Nico said them.
Bring me Rose.
