THE MAFIA BOSS'S FIANCÉE PUSHED HIS DAUGHTER AWAY FROM THE DINNER TABLE

Luca waited until Sophie was asleep before asking Isabella about June.

She stood by the study window, staring out at the rain-dark garden. Her hands were folded so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

“Tell me,” he said.

Isabella closed her eyes. “The month before I disappeared, I discovered I was pregnant.”

Luca stopped breathing.

“You were pregnant?”

“I was only a few weeks along. I hadn’t told you because I wanted to be certain. Then I found the ledgers, and everything fell apart.”

“Did you lose the baby?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked. “When Daniel’s men took me, they brought me to a private clinic. They said I had suffered a miscarriage. They wouldn’t let me see the records. I was drugged for days. When I woke up, they told me the baby was gone.”

Luca gripped the edge of the desk. “And you believed them?”

“I had no reason not to. I was alone, terrified, and they made sure I understood that Sophie’s life depended on my obedience.”

He wanted to reach for her, but the photograph of the teenage boy seemed to burn between them.

“Why would someone tell us to ask about June?”

“Because they know I never saw the medical records. Because they know I’ve wondered every day whether they lied.”

A secure call came through from the hospital. Matteo had regained consciousness. Luca drove there with Isabella, leaving Emily and two guards with Sophie.

Matteo looked gray beneath the hospital lights, but he was awake. His eyes moved to Isabella.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Tell us about the boy,” Luca said.

Matteo swallowed. “Daniel arranged the clinic. I was told Isabella had lost the baby. I never saw a body, a medical report, or a grave. Months later, I heard rumors that a child had been delivered alive and moved through a private adoption network.”

Luca’s voice hardened. “You knew that and said nothing?”

“I didn’t know if it was true. I searched for records, but every lead disappeared. Vanessa was involved in the adoption paperwork. I thought she had been paid to erase it.”

“Where is the boy now?”

“I don’t know. But the storage unit held a birth certificate. It listed the child’s mother as Elena Ward and the father as unknown. The date matched the week Isabella was taken.”

Isabella pressed a hand over her mouth. “That name was the one I used at the clinic.”

Matteo nodded. “Someone wanted us to find it.”

Luca stared at his brother. “Who?”

Before Matteo could answer, his heart monitor began to beep. Nurses rushed into the room, ordering them back. Luca caught Matteo’s hand as the doctors worked.

“Don’t leave this unfinished,” Luca said.

Matteo’s eyes fluttered. “The second witness wasn’t Vanessa.”

“Who was it?”

Matteo’s lips barely moved.

“Your mother.”

Luca stepped back as though struck. His mother had died when he was a teenager, long before Daniel’s staged death. He had remembered her as gentle, distant, and broken by the family’s violence.

“That’s impossible,” he said.

Matteo shook his head. “Not your mother. The woman Daniel called your mother.”

The monitor alarm sounded. Doctors pushed Luca and Isabella into the hall. They worked for several minutes before the beeping settled into a steady rhythm. Matteo had survived again, but he was too weak to speak.

Outside the room, Isabella held Luca’s hand. Neither of them knew what to say.

A nurse approached carrying a sealed document that had been found in Matteo’s personal effects. It was a copy of an old guardianship order, signed by Daniel Moretti and witnessed by a woman named Margaret Bell.

Luca recognized the name. Margaret had been his mother’s closest friend, a woman who had vanished from their lives when he was seventeen. Daniel had told him she died overseas.

The document named Margaret as guardian of a child born in June, with instructions that the child must never be told his true parentage.

Attached was a current address in Brooklyn.

Luca and Isabella went there before dawn. The building was modest, wedged between a laundromat and a shuttered bakery. A teenage boy opened the door. His gaze moved from Luca to Isabella, and his expression changed as if he had seen ghosts.

“You’re late,” he said.

Isabella covered her mouth.

The boy stepped aside. On a table behind him lay the original hospital bracelet, a faded photograph of Isabella from three years earlier, and a letter addressed to Luca.

The boy looked directly at him.

“My name is Adrian,” he said. “And before you ask, I know who you are.”

Luca held out a trembling hand. “Who told you?”