Chapter 3

I took out my phone and called Val.

My voice was terrifyingly calm.

"Two things. First—dig up everything on a woman named Natalia Ferro, and every connection between her and Marco. Second—find my son. At any cost. Whatever it takes."

"Understood."

The call ended.

For the next several days, I wore a mask that would have made even my father proud.

I smiled at Dominic across the breakfast table, asked him how his day had gone, and didn't flinch when he kissed me goodbye.

But at night, I moved into the guest room at the end of the hall—my excuse a persistent migraine and a draining project. He watched me with those blue eyes of his but said nothing.

Good. Let him keep believing everything was fine.

A week later, Val laid a sealed envelope on my desk.

"We recovered DNA from a coffee cup Natalia discarded at a café in Hoboken. The lab compared it with Marco's retained sample. She's his biological mother."

I had been expecting it, but the moment the final confirmation was in my hand, the pain still cut like a knife.

Six years. Every goodnight kiss, every scraped knee, every birthday cake—every ounce of love I had poured out had gone to a child carrying another woman's blood.

And then the more terrible truth hit me. Marco hadn't just been raised as my son—he had been formally presented to the entire family as the grandson of Don Enzo Valentini. Everyone believed he would inherit the family after me.

"One more thing." Val's jaw tightened. "Natalia Ferro was admitted to the same maternity ward that night—the same night you gave birth. She delivered a boy a few hours after you did. The emergency contact listed on her admission form was Dominic Valentini."

"And her child? What happened to him?"

"Official records show he died on the third day. Heart failure."

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place—one dark truth strung after another, like beads on a string.

Val's voice went on.

"There was a nurse working in the ward that night. Her name was Agnes Russo. She left the hospital soon afterward and later entered a convent on Staten Island. "

"Take me to her."

...

Two days later, I sat across from Sister Agnes in the Sacred Heart Convent. She was very old, her eyes cloudy, but the guilt of years shone through them.

"Tell me what happened that night."

She drew a trembling breath.

"Two women went into labor that night, almost at the same time. You delivered a healthy baby boy first. The other one—Miss Ferro—had a harder labor, but her child was born alive too. I held him myself. He was small, but he was breathing."

Her voice dropped.

"Then your husband arrived. He sent the guards away, spoke to the doctor alone, and I saw an envelope change hands. And then, with my own eyes, I watched that woman lift your baby out of the bassinet with her own hands, and put her child in his place."

The room fell into a dead silence.

"My son. What did they do to him?"

"They said he had died. But I saw that woman walk out of the hospital that night carrying a living child." Her voice broke. "Dominic paid me to keep quiet. I took the money. May God forgive me."

Val and I sat in the car in silence for a long time.

"Find him. Alive or dead, bring me the truth."

...

Three days later, Val called at two in the morning.

"Found him. A Catholic orphanage in rural Pennsylvania—St. Michael's Home for Boys. Six years ago, an infant boy was left there. No name, no listed parents. The timing matches down to the day."

I left that night. Four hours of dark highway, the needle pinned at a hundred.

By six in the morning, I was being led into a small walled courtyard. Children were playing in the pale morning light.

My eyes moved across face after face.

And then I saw him.

In the farthest corner, a small figure curled against the wall. Knees drawn to his chest, drowned in a sweater three sizes too big, the cuffs falling past his hands—hands blue with cold.

The nun followed my gaze and let out a soft sigh.

"When he was brought to us six years ago, he was wrapped in a blanket marked Holy Cross Hospital. He was only a few days old, badly dehydrated, and covered in bruises."

Even across that courtyard, I knew him at once—the shape of that face, the set of those eyes, the line of that jaw. He was mine.

My son. He had spent six years in that cold, forgotten corner—while I had poured all my love into another woman's child.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

Dominic. Natalia. You stole my life. And for six years, my child has carried the weight of your sins.

I will make you pay for every single day.