Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW HIS REAL NAME
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Raphael raised his gun.
Clara didn't flinch.
“If you shoot me,” she said, “you'll never find her.”
Dominic's voice was dangerously calm.
“Put your hands where I can see them.”
Clara obeyed.
Lucy noticed that the woman wasn't looking at Raphael's weapon. She was watching Dominic with an expression that seemed almost like pity.
“You have thirty seconds,” Dominic said. “Start explaining.”
“Your mother didn't die in the car accident twelve years ago. The accident was real. Her death was not.”
Dominic stared at her.
“Prove it.”
Clara reached slowly into her coat and produced a folded photograph.
Dominic took it.
A woman stood outside a small house beside a lake. Her hair was shorter than in the old family portraits, and age had deepened the lines around her mouth.
But she was unmistakably Elena Moretti.
The photograph had been taken two months earlier.
On the back was an address in northern Michigan.
Dominic's fingers tightened.
“Why now?”
“Because the people who hid her are preparing to move her again.”
“Who?”
Clara glanced at Raphael.
“Not in front of him.”
Raphael's expression hardened.
“You broke into a private estate, planted yourself in my boss's household, and possibly poisoned him. You don't get to decide who's trustworthy.”
“I didn't poison him.”
“Your fingerprints are on the tray.”
“Because I carried it upstairs. The person who contaminated the water switched the glass after I left the kitchen.”
Lucy stepped between them before Raphael could move closer.
“Then tell us who did it.”
Clara's gaze shifted toward Lucy.
“Someone who knew Dominic would never suspect them.”
A loud bang echoed through the house.
A guard shouted from downstairs.
Raphael turned toward the door.
“Stay here.”
Dominic grabbed his arm.
“Take two men. Secure the perimeter. Nobody approaches this room alone.”
Raphael nodded and left.
Dominic turned back to Clara.
“You have five minutes.”
Clara sat in the chair opposite the desk.
“Your father discovered that your mother had been investigating his business accounts. She found payments to a private medical facility, offshore transfers, and records connected to a woman who had supposedly died during childbirth.”
Dominic frowned.
“My father ran the family. There were hundreds of accounts.”
“These were different. He was paying someone to maintain a second identity.”
“Whose?”
Clara looked directly at him.
“Yours.”
Lucy felt Dominic stiffen beside her.
Clara continued.
“The man the world knows as Dominic Moretti was legally recorded under another name for the first year of his life. Your father changed the records after your mother's disappearance. He paid doctors, lawyers, and officials to make sure nobody asked questions.”
“Why?”
“Because the child originally registered under the name Dominic Moretti died at birth.”
Silence.
Lucy looked at the photograph, then at Dominic.
He seemed to have stopped breathing.
“You're saying I'm not my mother's son?”
“No,” Clara replied. “I'm saying the documents don't tell the whole story.”
She reached into her coat again and produced a small cassette recorder.
“Your father left a message. I was supposed to deliver it to you only if someone attempted to kill you.”
Dominic stared at the device.
“Play it.”
Clara pressed the button.
Static filled the room.
Then Vittorio Moretti's voice emerged, old and strained.
“If you're hearing this, Dominic, then someone has finally decided the truth is more dangerous than keeping you alive.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
His father's voice continued.
“The boy I raised was not the only child born that night. Your mother made me promise that both children would be protected. I broke that promise once. I will not let the same people take the other child from us.”
The recording ended.
Lucy looked at Clara.
“Both children?”
Clara nodded.
“Twins.”
Dominic opened his eyes.
“My brother?”
“Your brother was taken from the hospital before dawn. Your mother spent the rest of her life trying to find him.”
Dominic's voice turned cold.
“Who took him?”
Clara hesitated.
Then she looked at Lucy.
“That's why I needed to get inside this house.”
Lucy felt her stomach drop.
“What does that have to do with me?”
Clara reached into her pocket and placed a small silver pendant on the desk.
Lucy recognized it immediately.
She had worn it every day since she was a child.
Her mother had told her it belonged to her father, a man who had died before Lucy was born.
Clara's voice broke.
“Because the boy your mother raised under another name wasn't Dominic.”
May you like
She looked at Lucy.
“He was your father.”
