Chapter 2 - Six Doctors And One Lie
Bianca held out her hand.
"Give me the phone."
"No."
Her expression changed.
For the first time since I'd met her, Cassian's aunt looked genuinely frightened.
Not angry.
Not offended.
Afraid.
"That document isn't what you think."
"I haven't told you what I think."
"You don't need to."
I held the phone against my chest.
"Why was Cassian told he could never have children if this report said he needed another test?"
Bianca looked toward the locked door.
"Lower your voice."
"Why?"
"Because this family has survived by knowing when not to ask questions."
"I'm carrying a baby everybody downstairs thinks shouldn't exist. I think I've earned some questions."
Her eyes dropped briefly toward my stomach.
There was no visible change yet.
Still, the way she looked at me made me instinctively cover it with my hand.
Bianca saw the gesture.
Her face softened for half a second.
Then it vanished.
"Cassian was twenty-five when he became sick," she said. "The doctors believed the damage was permanent."
"Believed?"
"Medicine isn't perfect."
"Six doctors?"
She didn't answer.
I stepped closer.
"Who paid them?"
Her silence answered more clearly than words.
A knock sounded.
Bianca flinched.
"Open the door," Cassian said from the hallway.
Neither of us moved.
"Celia?"
My name sounded different in his voice.
Closer.
More urgent.
Bianca whispered, "Delete the photograph."
I stared at her.
"Why?"
"Because if Cassian sees that report tonight, he'll start digging."
"Maybe he should."
"You don't understand what digging costs in this family."
The doorknob moved.
"Celia."
I unlocked it.
Cassian entered.
His gaze traveled immediately from Bianca to me.
"What happened?"
"Nothing," Bianca said.
"Then why was the door locked?"
She smiled too quickly.
"Privacy."
Cassian looked at my phone.
"What did she show you?"
Bianca answered before I could.
"Nothing."
Wrong move.
Cassian became still.
"Leave."
"Cassian—"
"Now."
Bianca walked past him.
Before leaving, she looked back at me.
One warning.
Then she disappeared down the hallway.
Cassian closed the door.
"What did she want?"
I faced a choice.
The anonymous sender had told me not to show him.
Bianca had begged me to delete it.
And Cassian had spent nearly a decade believing something about his own body that might have been intentionally fabricated.
I handed him the phone.
He read the report.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
His expression never changed.
But his thumb pressed so hard against the side of the phone that his knuckle turned white.
"Where did you get this?"
"Unknown number."
He scrolled through the messages.
ASK WHO PAID THE SIX DOCTORS.
Cassian walked toward the window.
I watched him.
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know."
"You believe it's real."
"I recognize the hospital."
"That doesn't make it real."
"No."
He enlarged the signature.
"But I recognize the doctor's handwriting."
That frightened me.
"You remember handwriting from eight years ago?"
"I remember everything from that week."
He called someone.
"Bring me the original medical archive from St. Dominic's. Every test. Every invoice. Every doctor. And find the owner of this number."
He hung up.
"Cassian."
He turned.
"If the six doctors lied, why?"
"I intend to find out."
"What if it has something to do with the baby?"
His expression softened when I said baby.
It was brief.
Almost invisible.
But I saw it.
"So do I."
The next morning, my pregnancy was no longer private.
Nobody announced it.
Nobody had to.
The mansion staff knew something was happening because Cassian canceled three meetings and doubled security.
His family knew because Bianca apparently hadn't slept.
I knew because I woke at five in the morning and vomited until my knees hurt.
Cassian stood outside the bathroom holding a glass of water.
I looked up from the floor.
"You don't have to supervise."
"I'm not supervising."
"You're standing guard outside a bathroom."
"There are twelve people in this house I trust less than you."
"Very romantic."
"Drink."
I took the glass.
That strange morning became the first crack in the wall between us.
Cassian had always been controlled around me.
Polite when he could afford to be.
Distant when he couldn't.
But now he watched me differently.
Not like a suspicious husband.
Like a man trying to understand something he had forbidden himself to want.
I learned why later that day.
We were in his study when he opened a locked drawer and removed a small wooden box.
Inside was a photograph.
Cassian at maybe ten years old.
A younger Bianca.
A dark-haired woman who looked like him around the eyes.
"My mother," he said.
I'd never seen her.
"She died when I was fourteen."
"I'm sorry."
"She wanted grandchildren."
I waited.
"After the sixth specialist told me the diagnosis was final, I stopped thinking about children."
"Did you want them?"
He closed the box.
"I stopped allowing myself to answer that question."
That sentence hurt more than I expected.
Before I could respond, his security chief entered.
Marco DeLuca was forty, silent, and built like a door.
"We found something."
He placed six folders on Cassian's desk.
Each contained records from one specialist.
Cassian opened the first.
Then the second.
By the fourth, his face darkened.
"What?" I asked.
Marco answered.
"Every doctor received money within thirty days of diagnosing Mr. Raldi."
"From whom?"
"Different companies."
Cassian flipped through the invoices.
"Shell companies."
"Yes."
"Same owner?"
"We're tracing them."
I looked at the folders.
"Someone paid six doctors to tell him he was infertile."
Marco hesitated.
"It appears that way."
I sat down.
The pregnancy had transformed from family scandal into conspiracy.
But why?
Cassian controlled businesses worth hundreds of millions.
He had enemies.
He had relatives who expected inheritance.
Then I understood.
"An heir."
Cassian looked at me.
"If you had a child..."
Marco finished quietly.
"Succession changes."
Cassian's father had died five years earlier.
Cassian had inherited leadership of the Raldi organization because he was the eldest surviving direct descendant.
If Cassian died without children, control and several legitimate family holdings would eventually pass to his uncle Renato's branch.
Bianca's brother.
I felt cold.
"Renato benefits if you never have a child."
Cassian didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
That evening, Renato arrived uninvited.
He was sixty-one, silver-haired, elegant, and smiled like a man who had never personally dirtied his hands.
He congratulated me.
That alone made me suspicious.
"Extraordinary news," he said.
"That's one word for it."
He glanced at Cassian.
"Your husband always enjoyed proving doctors wrong."
Cassian didn't smile.
"I've ordered new tests."
Renato's eyes shifted.
"For the baby?"
"For me."
Silence.
Cassian leaned back.
"Strange thing. Apparently my original tests recommended follow-up examinations."
Renato touched his wineglass.
"Doctors make notes."
"Six doctors also received unusual payments."
Bianca went pale.
Renato did not.
"Are you accusing someone?"
"Not yet."
"Good. Because paranoia is dangerous in our position."
Our position.
Cassian noticed the phrase too.
After dinner, Renato left.
Bianca remained.
I found her alone in the conservatory.
"You know who did it."
She stared at the dark garden.
"I know what my brother is capable of."
"Renato?"
She closed her eyes.
"When Cassian's father was dying, succession became everything. Cassian was young. Renato believed the family needed stability."
"So he sterilized Cassian?"
"No."
She turned toward me.
"That was the point. Cassian was never sterile."
I froze.
"You knew."
"I suspected."
"For eight years?"
"I was afraid."
"Of your own brother?"
"You should be."
I stepped closer.
"Why didn't you tell Cassian?"
"Because the last person who tried died."
My breath caught.
"Who?"
Bianca looked toward the doorway.
Nobody was there.
Then she whispered, "Cassian's mother."
I stared at her.
"His mother died when he was fourteen."
"That's what Cassian believes."
A noise came from the hallway.
Bianca stopped speaking.
Cassian entered.
"What about my mother?"
Bianca's face collapsed.
He had heard enough.
"What about her?" he repeated.
She opened her mouth.
Before she could answer, Marco rushed in.
"Cassian."
He held a tablet.
"We traced the payments."
Cassian took it.
The screen showed a company name.
Then a signature authorization.
Cassian stared at it.
His expression changed.
Because the signature wasn't Renato's.
May you like
It belonged to someone Cassian trusted more than anyone alive.
And the person had just entered the room behind us.
