By the time we returned to the Moretti estate, the sun was high above the trees.
Mateo slept against my chest for most of the drive.
I barely moved.
Every few minutes, I looked down to make sure he was still there.
Alive.
Warm.
Real.
He had grown into a little boy while I had been mourning a ghost.
There were things I wanted to know.
His favorite food.
His favorite cartoon.
Whether he hated thunderstorms.
Whether he still slept with a night-light.
Whether anyone had held him when he was sick.
Whether he had ever cried for me.
But those questions could wait.
For the first time in three years, I had time.
The moment our car entered the estate, Elena ran from the house carrying Leo.
When she saw Mateo through the window, she stopped.
Her knees nearly buckled.
“Oh, my God.”
Mateo woke when I opened the door.
He looked around nervously.
“This is home,” I told him.
“My home?”
“If you want it to be.”
That mattered.
I would never again allow someone to make decisions about his life without considering what he needed.
Elena approached slowly.
“Mateo?”
He studied her.
She looked as though she were seeing a miracle.
“I don’t remember you,” he said.
“That’s okay.”
She smiled through tears.
“I remember you.”
Then Mateo looked at Leo.
The baby stared back.
Something strange happened.
Both children became completely still.
Leo smiled first.
Mateo smiled back.
“He looks like me.”
Nobody said anything.
I looked at Elena.
“Inside.”
She knew what was coming.
I gave Mateo breakfast in the kitchen before asking Mrs. Dawson, the housekeeper who had been with my family for twenty years, to stay with him.
Then Elena and I entered my office.
Dominic was brought upstairs.
He looked exhausted.
When I told him we had found Mateo, his legs nearly gave way.
“Alive?”
“Alive.”
Dominic covered his face with both hands.
A sound escaped him that I had never heard before.
Then he looked at me.
“Thank God.”
“You’re not cleared.”
“I know.”
I faced Elena.
“Vittorio said I should ask who Leo’s mother really is.”
Her expression emptied.
Dominic looked between us.
“What does that mean?”
“Elena?”
She sat down.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she whispered, “My name isn’t Elena Vasquez.”
Dominic cursed under his breath.
I remained silent.
“My legal name is Elena Sofia Bellandi.”
I knew the name.
Everyone in my world did.
Bellandi.
The family we had blamed for the kidnapping threat.
Our rivals for twenty years.
Dominic stared at her.
“You’re a Bellandi?”
“My father was Antonio Bellandi.”
I felt the room shift beneath my feet.
Antonio Bellandi had died four years earlier.
But before that, he had been one of the most powerful men on the East Coast.
And one of my father’s oldest enemies.
“You came into my house using a false identity.”
“Yes.”
“You had access to my rooms, my staff, my schedules, my son’s old belongings.”
“Yes.”
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t assume this was all part of something bigger.”
“Because my family is the reason Mateo survived.”
That silenced us.
Elena opened the collar of her blouse slightly and pulled out a thin chain.
A ring hung from it.
She removed it and placed it on my desk.
I recognized the crest.
My father’s.
Moretti.
“What is that?”
“My mother gave it to me before she died.”
“Why did your mother have my father’s ring?”
Elena took a trembling breath.
“Because Antonio Bellandi wasn’t my biological father.”
Dominic leaned against the wall.
I stared at the ring.
“No.”
“My mother had an affair thirty-two years ago.”
My stomach turned.
“With my father?”
She nodded.
The truth hit me slowly.
“You’re saying...”
“We share a father.”
I sat down.
For most men, learning their maid was actually their half-sister would have been enough for one morning.
My life had apparently decided otherwise.
“Elena is my sister.”
“Yes.”
“Leo is my nephew.”
“Yes.”
That explained everything.
The eyes.
The curls.
The shape of his face.
The birthmark could travel through family blood.
I thought of the way Leo had looked at me.
The way something inside me had recognized him.
Not as Mateo.
As family.
“Did you know before coming here?”
“No. I learned two years ago.”
“How?”
“My mother left letters.”
Elena explained.
Her mother, Sofia Bellandi, had loved my father before either of them married.
When she became pregnant, the feud between the Morettis and Bellandis made the truth dangerous.
Antonio Bellandi agreed to raise the baby as his own, provided no Moretti ever learned the truth.
That baby was Elena.
After Antonio died and Sofia became ill, she finally confessed.
“So you came here because you discovered you had a brother.”
“Partly.”
“And partly because Vittorio’s people ordered you.”
“Yes.”
“Why did Vittorio know who you were?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic spoke.
“He knew everything about your father.”
I looked at him.
Dominic continued.
“Vittorio handled family intelligence for decades. If your father had an affair, Vittorio probably knew.”
A darker thought occurred to me.
“Vittorio blamed the Bellandis for the threat against Mateo.”
Elena nodded.
“But if he knew you were my sister...”
“He knew the Bellandis would never target Mateo,” she finished.
Exactly.
Because Mateo was Elena’s nephew too.
The entire kidnapping threat had been manufactured.
Vittorio had created an enemy to justify taking my son.
“Why?” Dominic asked. “Why keep Mateo alive?”
I thought of my uncle’s words.
You became stronger because of it.
“He wanted control.”
A dead child made me angry.
Anger made me easier to manipulate.
For three years, Vittorio had encouraged every act of retaliation that expanded our territory.
He pushed me into wars I might otherwise have avoided.
Each victory increased the power of the Moretti organization.
And Vittorio controlled enormous pieces of it behind the scenes.
I had been his weapon.
Mateo had been the chain around my throat.
“But why let me find him now?” I asked.
Elena frowned.
“He didn’t.”
“Someone sent you that photograph.”
“Yes.”
“Someone wanted the truth uncovered.”
Dominic straightened.
“Could have been someone inside Vittorio’s operation.”
A knock sounded.
Andre entered.
“Boss, we found something on Vittorio.”
After we secured the Vermont property, my men had detained Vittorio and searched the house.
Inside a locked safe were medical records, financial documents, and photographs of Mateo taken over the past three years.
But there was something else.
A list.
Names.
Judges.
Police officers.
Business owners.
Members of both the Moretti and Bellandi families.
Some were marked with dates.
Several were dead.
I recognized the pattern.
Vittorio had engineered more than my tragedy.
He had spent years feeding both families information that kept the feud alive.
Every time peace became possible, someone died.
Every time negotiations began, evidence appeared implicating the other side.
“He built his power on the war,” Elena said.
“Yes.”
Dominic scanned the names.
Then froze.
“What?”
He pointed.
One name near the bottom.
Lorenzo DeLuca.
The man who had been kneeling in my office when Leo crawled inside.
“Bring him up.”
Lorenzo entered ten minutes later.
His hands were cuffed.
The blood had dried on his mouth.
“You accused him of selling information,” Dominic said.
“I know.”
Lorenzo looked at me.
“I wasn’t selling it.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Trying to get it to you.”
I sat behind my desk.
“Start talking.”
Lorenzo looked at Elena and blinked.
“You found her.”
“You know her?”
“No. But I knew Vittorio had a Bellandi woman inside the house.”
Elena stiffened.
Lorenzo continued.
“Vittorio kept files. I found fragments. He knew I was getting close, so he planted records making it look like I was stealing from you.”
“And you said nothing while Dominic held a gun on you?”
“Would you have believed me?”
I hated that the answer was probably no.
“What did you find?”
Lorenzo leaned forward.
“Vittorio isn’t working alone.”
Elena and I exchanged a look.
“Who?”
“I don’t have a name.”
“Then you have nothing.”
“I have a location.”
He gave me an address.
New York City.
An old private bank building owned by a holding company.
“What’s there?”
“Vittorio’s archive. Everything he used to control both families.”
Dominic looked at me.
“If we get those files, we can expose the whole operation.”
“And end the war,” Elena whispered.
The possibility seemed impossible.
The Moretti-Bellandi conflict was older than I was.
Men had been born into it.
Some had died without knowing why it started.
Maybe Vittorio had not created the original hatred.
But he had made sure it never ended.
A soft knock came at the door.
Mateo peeked inside.
I immediately stood.
“Hey.”
He held a piece of paper.
“I made something.”
I crouched.
He handed it to me.
It was a drawing.
A house.
A sun.
Two stick figures holding hands.
One tall.
One small.
Above them, in shaky letters, he had written:
ME + PAPA.
I could not speak.
“Do you like it?”
I pulled him into my arms.
“It’s the best thing anybody has ever given me.”
Mateo smiled.
Then he noticed Elena.
“And the baby?”
I looked at her.
Some truths should be complicated.
This one didn’t need to be.
“That’s your Aunt Elena.”
Mateo’s eyes widened.
“I have an aunt?”
“You do.”
“And the baby?”
“Your cousin Leo.”
He grinned.
“I have a cousin?”
Elena began crying.
Mateo looked alarmed.
“Why does everybody cry here?”
For the first time all day, I laughed.
A real laugh.
Even Dominic smiled.
Maybe that was the exact moment I realized something.
I had spent three years thinking power meant making people afraid.
But standing there with my son’s drawing in one hand and my newly discovered sister holding her baby across the room, power suddenly meant something entirely different.
It meant protecting the chance we had been given.
And I would burn Vittorio’s entire empire to the ground before I let him take it away.
That night, Mateo slept in my room.
Not because he asked.
Because I couldn’t bear the thought of waking up and discovering the last twelve hours had been a dream.
At 2:17 a.m., my phone rang.
Andre.
I answered quietly.
“What?”
“Vittorio escaped.”
I sat upright.
“What did you say?”
“Transport vehicle was hit twenty minutes ago. Two guards wounded. Vittorio’s gone.”
My blood turned cold.
I looked toward Mateo.
Still asleep.
“Lock the estate.”
“Already happening.”
Then another sound came through my phone.
Andre’s voice changed.
“Boss... wait.”
“What?”
“We found something in the vehicle.”
Silence.
“A phone.”
“Vittorio’s?”
“No.”
“Whose?”
Andre took a breath.
“It belonged to the man who helped him escape.”
He paused.
“And the last number dialed was Elena’s.”
I turned toward the connecting door leading to her side of the house.
It was open.
I crossed the room.
Her bed was empty.
Leo’s crib was empty.
On the pillow lay a single handwritten note.
I picked it up.
Marco,
I’m sorry.
Don’t follow me.
If you do, Mateo dies.
My hands started shaking.
Then I heard Mateo’s sleepy voice behind me.
“Papa?”
I turned.
He rubbed his eyes.
“Where’s Aunt Elena?”
I folded the note before he could see it.
And forced myself to smile.
But inside, the monster I thought I had buried was waking up again.
Because someone had taken my sister.
Someone had taken Leo.
And this time...
they had threatened Mateo.