Chapter 7 - THE BLOOD BETWEEN US
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The bullet had passed through Vincent's side without striking a major artery, but he lost enough blood that the drive to a private clinic became a race against time.
I sat beside him in the back of the SUV, pressing a folded towel against his wound.
“Stay awake,” I told him.
His eyes opened halfway.
“You always give orders when you're frightened?”
“Only to stubborn men who refuse to follow them.”
He managed a faint smile.
“Then I'll try to be cooperative.”
At the clinic, a surgeon treated him while I paced the corridor. His security team wanted me escorted back to the estate, but I refused.
I had spent years being told to wait outside rooms where decisions about my life were made.
Never again.
When Vincent finally woke, he found me sitting beside his bed.
“You stayed.”
“Don't sound so surprised.”
“I thought you'd be angry.”
“I am angry.”
He looked at the bandage beneath his ribs.
“At me?”
“At everyone who knew something about my life and decided I wasn't entitled to the truth.”
He absorbed that without arguing.
Then he reached toward me.
I took his hand.
“I don't know who your father was,” he said. “But I know who I am. Whatever connection our families had, it doesn't change what I feel for you.”
My throat tightened.
“Don't tell me what you feel while you're lying in a hospital bed. You could be confusing gratitude with love.”
“I'm not.”
“You don't know that.”
He held my gaze.
“Then let me prove it when I'm standing again.”
I looked away because I wanted to believe him.
That was precisely what frightened me.
A nurse entered carrying a sealed envelope. It had been delivered by a courier who refused to provide a name.
Inside was a copy of my birth certificate.
My father's name was listed as UNKNOWN.
Attached was a laboratory report dated twenty-five years earlier, bearing the signature of Dr. Samuel Price, the same physician who had signed Isabella's death certificate.
The report identified Anthony Moretti as the biological father of a female infant born to Elizabeth Mitchell.
I read the result three times.
Then I sat down.
Vincent watched my face.
“What is it?”
I handed him the report.
He read it slowly.
His face went white.
“No.”
I couldn't speak.
“No,” he repeated, as if saying the word enough times could change the paper in his hands.
The report was accompanied by a letter from Vanessa.
Now you understand why your father protected Grace. He wasn't protecting a witness. He was protecting his daughter.
Vincent pushed the letter away.
“It's a lie.”
“Maybe.”
“Anthony never told me he had another child.”
“Your father lied about many things.”
He looked at me with an expression I would never forget.
It wasn't disgust.
It was grief.
The possibility that we shared a father had turned every unspoken feeling between us into something unbearable.
I rose from the chair.
“Grace, wait.”
“I need time.”
“Please.”
I turned back.
“Don't ask me to comfort you about the possibility that we're related. I can barely stand inside my own head right now.”
He closed his eyes.
“You're right.”
I left the room.
For the next two days, I stayed at a small hotel under a different name. Vincent sent no flowers, no gifts, and no guards to my door.
He respected the distance I had asked for.
That mattered more than I wanted it to.
On the third morning, Isabella called me from an unknown number.
“I have the original birth records,” she said. “The laboratory report Vanessa sent you was altered.”
My heart pounded.
“How do you know?”
“Because I watched Anthony order the alteration himself.”
“Who is my father?”
There was a long silence.
Then Isabella said, “Your mother had a relationship with someone Anthony considered his greatest enemy.”
“Who?”
“Richard Cole.”
The name meant nothing to me.
But when I searched it, I found an old photograph of a man standing beside Anthony Moretti at a charity gala.
He was younger than Anthony, with dark eyes and a scar across his chin.
The caption identified him as the founder of Cole International.
And beneath the photograph was an obituary.
Richard Cole had died twenty-six years earlier.
His only surviving child was listed as an adopted son.
Vincent Moretti.
I read the caption until the words blurred.
Then Isabella spoke again.
“Grace, listen carefully. Vincent isn't Anthony's biological son.”
I stopped breathing.
“He was adopted?”
“Yes. Anthony stole him from Richard Cole after Richard was murdered.”
My phone slipped in my hand.
If Isabella was telling the truth, the report Vanessa had sent me was fabricated.
Vincent and I might not share a father.
But that meant someone had spent twenty-five years hiding the identity of both our parents.
And Vanessa had known enough to weaponize the lie.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
“Tell me where.”
“I can't. They have people watching every address I use.”
“Who has you?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Anthony's oldest ally.”
A sound came through the phone.
A door opening.
Isabella gasped.
May you like
“Grace, if I disappear again, find the man with the silver ring. He was there when they switched the babies.”
The line went dead.
