Chapter 6 - THE SON WHO GREW UP HATING THE MORETTIS
The name on the report was Michael Bellamy.
Luca read it twice.
Then a third time.
“Is this the boy you told me about?” he asked Grace.
She nodded slowly.
“I believe so.”
Anna sat on the edge of the sofa, twisting a silver ring around her finger.
“I've never met him,” she said. “The Bellamys told me I was an only child. When my adoptive mother died, I found letters hidden in her sewing room. One mentioned a boy who had been taken from the same hospital.”
“Why didn't you go to the police?”
“I did. They said the documents were too old and the names had been changed. Then someone broke into my apartment and took the originals.”
Luca glanced at Marco.
“Can you verify the report?”
“Already working on it,” Marco replied.
Anna watched Luca with undisguised anger.
“Do you expect me to believe you didn't know?”
“No.”
The blunt answer surprised her.
“I expect you to believe I didn't know until today. You don't owe me trust.”
“You're a Moretti.”
“Unfortunately, that doesn't make me responsible for everything my father did.”
“It makes you responsible for what you do now.”
Luca accepted that, too.
For the first time, he understood why Elena had written her warning. She had not been trying to protect herself from a single villain. She had been surrounded by a family structure that treated children as bargaining pieces and women as inconvenient witnesses.
He would not repeat it.
“Where is Michael?” he asked.
Anna shook her head.
“I don't know. But there's a name in one of the letters: Daniel Reed. He worked at a children's home outside Philadelphia. He may have known where the boy went.”
Grace's hands began to tremble.
“Daniel Reed died last winter.”
Luca exhaled.
“Of course he did.”
“But he had a daughter,” Grace added. “She still works at the home.”
Marco called his contacts and obtained an address within minutes.
Before they left, Grace caught Luca's arm.
“There's something else you need to know about Vanessa.”
Luca turned.
“What?”
“She came to see me six months ago. She asked whether Elena had ever spoken about a second daughter.”
Luca's expression darkened.
“She knew before the test.”
“Yes. But she wasn't asking for herself. She was asking because someone had threatened her.”
“Who?”
Grace looked toward Anna.
“The same person who sent her the photograph.”
Luca remembered Vanessa's fear in the basement.
For the first time, he wondered whether her lies had been motivated by more than ambition.
That did not excuse what she had done to Clara or Sophia.
But it meant the conspiracy was still moving.
At the children's home outside Philadelphia, they met Rebecca Reed, a woman in her thirties who managed the institution's records.
She listened to Luca's explanation without interrupting.
When he finished, she closed her office door.
“My father kept a private ledger,” she said. “He believed some of the children transferred through the home had been placed illegally. He tried to report it, but someone threatened his family.”
“Did he identify Michael?”
Rebecca nodded.
“He called him Michael Shaw. The boy was adopted by a family in Pennsylvania, then moved again when he was eight.”
“Why?”
“His adoptive father died. The family couldn't afford to keep him, and a private guardian arranged another placement.”
“Who was the guardian?”
Rebecca pulled a file from a locked cabinet.
The name had been typed in bold.
VANESSA STERLING.
Luca stared at the page.
“She was a child herself when my father arranged the adoption.”
“Your father funded the placement,” Rebecca said. “Vanessa's mother worked for him. She may have been involved in the paperwork, but I don't know what Vanessa understood at the time.”
Anna looked at Luca.
“So she knew where he was.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
Rebecca handed him a more recent photograph.
A man in his late twenties stood outside a mechanic's garage, wearing a dark work shirt. He had Luca's sharp jaw, Elena's green eyes, and a small crescent-shaped scar near his eyebrow.
Luca stared at the image.
He had never met the man.
Yet something about his face felt painfully familiar.
“What's his current name?” Luca asked.
Rebecca hesitated.
“Michael Reed.”
“Where can I find him?”
She gave him the address.
Luca was halfway to the door when Rebecca spoke again.
“One warning, Mr. Moretti.”
He stopped.
“Michael knows about the adoption. He knows the Moretti family was involved. He has spent years believing you chose your inheritance over him.”
“I didn't know he existed.”
“He won't care.”
Three hours later, Luca stood outside the garage.
A man emerged from beneath a raised car, wiped grease from his hands, and looked up.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Michael's expression hardened.
“You're late,” he said.
Luca's throat tightened.
“Michael—”
“Don't call me that like you have the right.”
He threw a wrench onto the workbench.
“You want to know why I agreed to meet you?”
Luca waited.
Michael pulled a folded document from his pocket and shoved it into Luca's chest.
“Because I found something in the records. Something that proves your father didn't just steal me from Elena.”
He leaned closer.
May you like
“He paid someone to make sure you never had another son.”
END OF CHAPTER 6
