Chapter 5 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Elena stared at her father’s face.
Twenty-eight years of questions collapsed into one photograph.
Miguel looked older.
Thinner.
But alive.
Adrien took the phone from her trembling hand.
“You’re not going.”
Elena looked at him.
He immediately corrected himself.
“I mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
“I’m failing this very quickly.”
“Spectacularly.”
He almost smiled.
Then Elena said, “I’m going.”
Adrien nodded.
“I’m coming if you want me.”
“I do.”
Those words changed something between them.
Luca could not leave the hospital yet.
Elena could barely walk comfortably.
So Detective Bell refused to allow either of them to visit St. Catherine’s that night.
Instead, police surrounded the abandoned clinic.
They found no one.
Miguel was gone.
Gabriel was gone.
But inside an old records room, investigators found boxes of files hidden behind a false wall.
One bore Isabel Cruz’s name.
Elena’s mother.
The file contained maternity records.
Not one child.
Two.
Elena had been born first.
Daniel followed eleven months later.
But the father listed on Daniel’s record was not Miguel Cruz.
It was Adrien Moretti.
“That’s impossible,” Elena whispered.
Adrien agreed.
He would have been eighteen.
He had never met Isabel.
Camille explained the illegal fertility program.
Daniel had apparently been one of its earliest victims.
Not conceived through a relationship.
Created through stolen biological material.
Sofia discovered it years later.
She tried to expose Adrien’s father, Vittorio.
Then she died.
“So my mother knew?” Elena asked.
Camille nodded.
“Eventually.”
“Why tell me Daniel died?”
“To protect him.”
“Where is he?”
“No one knows.”
Adrien stood at the window.
“If he survived, he’d be twenty-seven.”
Elena looked at Luca sleeping nearby.
Her newborn son had somehow reopened a crime that began before she was old enough to understand it.
The following morning, DNA confirmation arrived.
The archived report was genuine.
Daniel Cruz was genetically Adrien’s son.
Biologically, that made Daniel Elena’s younger brother.
And Luca’s half-brother and uncle through different family lines created by the crime.
Elena pressed both hands over her face.
“This is insane.”
“Yes,” Adrien said.
“And disgusting.”
“Yes.”
“And none of it is Daniel’s fault.”
Adrien looked at her.
“No.”
That answer mattered.
Elena had feared he might see Daniel as evidence of what had been done to him.
Instead Adrien said, “If he’s alive, he’s a person who deserves to know who he is.”
Later that afternoon, Luca was cleared to leave.
Adrien offered three places.
His penthouse.
A secured hotel suite.
Elena’s apartment after police cleared it.
“You’re giving me options?”
“I made a list.”
“You made a list?”
“I’m learning.”
She chose the hotel.
Adrien arranged adjoining rooms.
Not one shared suite.
Another boundary respected.
That night, Elena could not sleep.
At 2:17 a.m., someone knocked.
Three times.
Adrien appeared in the connecting doorway but did not enter.
“Do you want me to answer it?”
“Yes.”
He opened the hall door.
No one was there.
Only a black envelope.
Inside was an old photograph.
Isabel Cruz stood beside Sofia Moretti.
They were smiling.
Friends.
On the back, Isabel had written:
WE AGREED THE CHILDREN WOULD NEVER PAY FOR THEIR FATHERS’ SINS.
Elena sank onto the bed.
Adrien sat opposite her.
“My mother knew yours.”
“Yes.”
“Which means your mother knew who I was long before we met.”
Elena looked up.
A horrifying possibility emerged.
“Adrien.”
“What?”
“What if us meeting wasn’t an accident?”
Their relationship had begun three years earlier when Adrien walked into Elena’s bookstore searching for a rare first edition.
He returned the next day.
And the next.
Within months, they were inseparable.
Elena had always believed it was chance.
Now she remembered something.
The book Adrien had requested.
Her mother had given it to her.
Inside its cover was a handwritten inventory number.
Elena hurried to her bag.
She still carried the bookstore key ring.
Attached was a tiny brass key that had belonged to her mother.
She had never known what it opened.
The key from Locker 614 looked almost identical.
Adrien compared them.
Same manufacturer.
Different teeth.
Two keys.
One lock somewhere.
At dawn, Bell called.
Police had found Miguel.
He had walked voluntarily into a precinct.
He would speak only to Elena.
She went with Adrien.
Miguel sat behind glass.
When Elena entered, he cried.
She did not.
“You abandoned us.”
“I was forced away.”
“By whom?”
“Vittorio Moretti.”
Adrien remained silent.
Miguel looked at him.
“You look like him.”
“I’m not him.”
“No,” Miguel said. “Sofia made sure of that.”
Elena leaned forward.
“Where is Daniel?”
Miguel closed his eyes.
“Alive.”
Her heart slammed.
“Where?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your mother hid him.”
“My mother told me he was dead.”
“She had to.”
“Why?”
“Because Vittorio wanted him back.”
Elena’s voice cracked.
“Back? He wasn’t his.”
“No.”
Miguel looked at Adrien.
“He belonged to the Moretti bloodline, and that was enough for Vittorio.”
Adrien’s fists tightened.
Elena noticed.
He opened them again.
“Who has Daniel now?” Adrien asked.
Miguel looked toward the observation window.
“Someone who has been waiting eleven years to finish what Sofia started.”
“Gabriel?”
Miguel nodded.
Then the interrogation-room door opened.
A detective stepped inside.
His face was pale.
“Elena, there’s someone outside asking for you.”
“Who?”
The detective hesitated.
“She says her name is Isabel Cruz.”
Elena’s chair scraped backward.
May you like
Her mother had been dead for nine years.
And the woman outside had just asked to see her daughter.
