Chapter 6 - The Secret Beneath the Valente Name
Mateo entered Vale Medical Research through the front door.
No weapon.
No security visible.
Luca hated every part of it.
“You have four men behind the east entrance.”
“I said alone.”
“They’re decorative.”
“Luca.”
“Fine. Two men.”
Mateo ended the call.
The elevator carried him upward.
Adrian waited on the sixth floor.
Arya sat in a chair near the desk.
Untied.
Unrestrained.
Mateo looked at her first.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Adrian smiled.
“How touching.”
Mateo ignored him.
The ledger remained on the desk.
“What does my father have to do with Arya?”
Adrian leaned against a cabinet.
“Dominic Valente funded the first cardiac research program.”
“I know.”
“He also approved experimental procedures.”
Mateo looked at Arya.
Her face had gone pale.
Adrian continued.
“Twenty-four years ago, a young woman named Evelyn Monroe brought her infant son to St. Catherine’s.”
Arya stood.
“My mother?”
Adrian smiled.
“Yes.”
Arya’s younger brother Noah had been born with congenital heart disease.
Mateo knew that.
What he had not known was that Noah had once been enrolled in an experimental program.
“Your father financed it,” Adrian said.
Mateo’s voice remained controlled.
“Financing research does not make him responsible for abuse.”
“No.”
Adrian picked up a folder.
“This might.”
He threw it onto the table.
Dominic Valente’s signature appeared on the authorization.
Arya stared.
Mateo read.
Experimental waiver.
Liability protection.
Confidentiality.
His father had signed it.
“Noah survived,” Adrian said. “Others did not.”
Arya looked at Mateo.
He felt something inside him crack.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
Her answer surprised him.
Adrian frowned.
Arya continued.
“You were nineteen.”
Mateo looked at her.
“You already knew?”
“I learned tonight.”
Adrian’s satisfaction vanished.
“You were supposed to blame him.”
Arya almost smiled.
“You really don’t understand me at all.”
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“That document proves the Valente family built everything I continued.”
“No,” Mateo said. “It proves my father made a terrible decision.”
“He protected the program.”
“Then his name goes into the evidence too.”
Adrian blinked.
Mateo stepped closer.
“You thought I came here to protect my reputation?”
“The Valente name is everything to you.”
“No.”
Mateo looked at Arya.
“People are.”
Silence.
Adrian laughed.
“Very noble.”
“No. Just expensive to learn.”
Arya moved toward the ledger.
Adrian stepped between them.
“Stop.”
Mateo’s eyes narrowed.
For the first time, Adrian was losing control.
“You’re finished,” Arya said.
“You think that ledger matters?”
“Yes.”
“Vittorio owns judges.”
“Not all of them.”
“Police?”
“Not all.”
“Hospital administrators?”
“Enough.”
Mateo smiled faintly.
“That is why Elena sent copies to federal investigators three hours ago.”
Adrian froze.
Mateo was bluffing.
Mostly.
Elena had prepared packages.
But she had needed the ledger to complete them.
Adrian did not know that.
His hand moved toward his jacket.
Arya saw it.
So did Mateo.
“Don’t.”
Adrian pulled a small pistol.
He pointed it toward Mateo.
Arya stepped sideways.
“Arya, stay there.”
She did not.
Adrian’s attention shifted.
Mateo moved.
Fast.
He knocked the weapon aside.
The shot shattered a glass cabinet.
Arya ducked.
Mateo drove Adrian into the wall.
Adrian swung wildly.
Mateo blocked.
One punch.
Adrian collapsed.
Mateo stood above him.
Years of anger surged through him.
Bruises.
Fear.
Elena.
Children.
Lies.
Adrian looked up.
“What are you waiting for?”
Mateo wanted to hurt him.
He could.
No witnesses would stop him.
Then Arya spoke.
“Mateo.”
He looked at her.
She shook her head once.
Not for Adrian.
For Mateo.
Mateo stepped away.
“Call the police.”
Arya exhaled.
Adrian laughed from the floor.
“You think police save people like her?”
Mateo turned.
“No.”
Sirens approached.
“But evidence does.”
Luca entered moments later with federal agents.
Adrian’s face collapsed.
Mateo looked at Luca.
“Decorative?”
Luca shrugged.
“I accessorize well.”
The ledger changed everything.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Patient deaths.
Falsified reports.
Vittorio’s accounts.
Hospital executives.
Adrian’s signature.
Dominic Valente’s old authorizations.
Mateo did exactly what Adrian had believed impossible.
He released all of it.
Including his father’s involvement.
The Valente Foundation issued a statement acknowledging historical funding failures and promising restitution.
Mateo personally established a victims’ fund.
He made no attempt to sanitize Dominic’s legacy.
Some advisers begged him.
“Your father built this company.”
Mateo answered:
“Then the truth can survive his name.”
Adrian was arrested.
Hospital officials followed.
But Vittorio remained free.
For forty-eight hours.
Then Elena received a call.
“He wants to trade.”
Mateo looked up.
“For what?”
“Himself.”
“That sounds unlike Vittorio.”
“He says he has one final file.”
“About?”
Elena hesitated.
“Arya.”
Mateo’s expression changed.
Arya sat across the room.
“What about her?”
“He says Adrian was never the person who first selected her.”
Arya went still.
Elena continued.
“He says her employment at Valente Tower was arranged.”
Mateo frowned.
“Arya applied through executive recruiting.”
“That recruiting company belonged to a shell corporation.”
Mateo understood.
“Vittorio.”
Elena nodded.
Arya stood slowly.
“Why would he place me near Mateo eleven months ago?”
Nobody answered.
Then Mateo’s computer chimed.
An email had arrived.
FROM: VITTORIO VALENTE.
SUBJECT: WHY ARYA WAS CHOSEN.
Mateo opened it.
One sentence appeared.
ASK HER MOTHER WHO MATEO VALENTE REALLY IS.
Attached was a birth certificate.
Mateo downloaded it.
Arya stood beside him.
The document listed her mother, Evelyn Monroe.
Father:
DOMINIC VALENTE.
Mateo stared at the screen.
Arya stopped breathing.
If the document was real, Dominic Valente was her father too.
Which meant—
“No,” Mateo whispered.
Arya stepped backward.
The room tilted around them.
Elena grabbed the paper.
“This can’t be right.”
Mateo could not look at Arya.
Eleven months.
Every feeling.
Every moment.
Every truth he had never spoken.
Then Arya’s phone rang.
Her mother.
Arya answered with shaking hands.
“Mom?”
Evelyn Monroe was crying.
“Arya, listen to me.”
“Is Dominic Valente my father?”
Silence.
“Mom?”
“No.”
Everyone froze.
Arya gripped the phone.
“Then why does the certificate say he is?”
Evelyn whispered:
“Because Dominic was hiding your real father.”
Mateo looked up.
Arya asked:
“Who?”
May you like
The answer came quietly.
“Vittorio.”
