Chapter 7 - The Truth Salvatore Buried
Richard stepped through the hidden door.
And behind him stood Lucia Bellini.
Tessa stared at them.
Lucia looked nothing like the composed elderly woman who had appeared at Tessa’s apartment carrying Antonio’s final envelope.
Her gray hair had come loose around her face.
Her coat was gone.
One sleeve of her blouse was torn.
And she looked terrified.
“Lucia?”
“Tessa, don't believe him.”
Richard stopped.
“I haven't said anything.”
“I wasn't talking about you.”
Her eyes moved to Salvatore.
The wine room went silent.
Tessa still held the DNA report.
The second page shook slightly between her fingers.
She had seen the name.
Salvatore had seen it too.
Neither had spoken it.
Richard looked at the paper.
“So Carlo finally gave it to you.”
“Where is he?”
“I don't know.”
“He disappeared through this room.”
“Yes.”
“And you came through the same door.”
“Because Carlo called me ten minutes ago.”
Tessa laughed sharply.
“Everyone apparently has everyone else's phone number except me.”
“Tessa—”
“Stop.”
She placed the DNA report flat on the table.
“Start with this.”
Lucia looked down.
Her face changed.
Salvatore noticed.
“You knew.”
Lucia slowly shook her head.
“I suspected.”
“Everybody suspects,” Tessa snapped. “Nobody knows. Nobody remembers. Nobody tells me. I'm done.”
She tapped the blacked-out name.
“Who is my father?”
Richard said nothing.
Lucia closed her eyes.
Salvatore looked at Tessa.
“You saw the name.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
Tessa couldn't.
Because the name beneath the blacked-out section made no sense.
Antonio Cosenza.
The man who had lived next door.
The man who bought her groceries when Elaine was sick.
The man who attended her graduation.
The man who taught her Sicilian.
The man she had loved like a grandfather.
Tessa finally forced the words out.
“Antonio.”
Lucia sat down.
Richard looked away.
Salvatore remained motionless.
Tessa stared at him.
“You recognized the name immediately.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Don't lie.”
“I am not.”
“Then why did you look like you'd seen a ghost?”
Salvatore pointed at the report.
“Because Antonio was my oldest friend.”
“And?”
“And because if Antonio was your father, almost everything I believed about 1993 was wrong.”
Tessa felt her anger falter.
Lucia whispered, “The report isn't complete.”
Tessa turned.
“What?”
“That percentage is real.”
“Then Antonio was my father.”
Lucia shook her head.
“No. It proves the tested man had a parent-child relationship to the sample.”
Tessa frowned.
“What are you saying?”
“Antonio had a brother.”
“Matteo.”
“Yes.”
“Michael Mercer.”
“Yes.”
Lucia touched the report.
“The laboratory paperwork identifying which brother provided the comparison sample disappeared.”
Tessa stared at her.
“So this doesn't tell us whether Antonio or Matteo was my biological father?”
“No.”
Tessa laughed.
It came out dangerously close to crying.
“Perfect.”
She sat.
“Absolutely perfect.”
Every answer opened another door.
Behind every door was another lie.
Richard moved closer.
“Elaine knew that.”
Tessa looked up.
“What?”
“She knew the test couldn't distinguish the brothers with the records available at the time.”
“Then why keep it?”
“Because it proved something else.”
“What?”
“That you were a Cosenza.”
The name struck differently now.
Theresa Elaine Cosenza.
The voice outside her apartment had known.
Tessa looked toward Lucia.
“Who called me that?”
“I don't know.”
“Someone does.”
“Yes.”
“Someone who knew this before I did.”
Lucia nodded.
Tessa remembered Gabriel.
Palermo.
The hidden room.
The wall of photographs.
She grabbed her phone.
No messages.
She called him.
He answered immediately.
“Tessa.”
Relief hit her harder than expected.
“You're okay?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“Hotel near the airport.”
“Good.”
A pause.
“Something happened?”
She looked at the DNA report.
“I found out Antonio might have been my father.”
Silence.
“Might?”
“Or Matteo.”
Gabriel exhaled slowly.
“Tessa…”
“Don't.”
“Don't what?”
“Don't give me sympathy. I can't handle sympathy right now.”
“All right.”
His voice remained steady.
“What do you need?”
That question almost broke her.
Nobody had asked it.
Not once.
Not Salvatore.
Not Caterina.
Not Vittorio.
Not Lucia.
Everyone had been too busy deciding what Tessa should know.
“What did you find in Palermo?”
Gabriel hesitated.
“A safe.”
Salvatore stepped closer.
“What was inside?”
“Documents.”
“What documents?”
“Your father's original will.”
Salvatore froze.
“My father's will was filed in Palermo.”
“Not this version.”
Lucia whispered, “Oh God.”
Tessa looked at her.
“What?”
Lucia stood.
“Antonio said there were two.”
Salvatore turned sharply.
“You knew?”
“He told me your father changed the will after Caterina disappeared.”
“I know that.”
“No.”
Lucia shook her head.
“You know about the second version.”
Salvatore stared at her.
“There was a third.”
Nobody spoke.
Gabriel heard through the phone.
“Yes.”
Salvatore looked suddenly unsteady.
“What does it say?”
Paper rustled through the speaker.
Gabriel read slowly.
“Half of the family holdings pass to Salvatore Rossi.”
Salvatore nodded.
“The remaining half?”
Another pause.
“To the biological child of Caterina Rossi.”
Tessa looked at Caterina's pendant around her neck.
“That doesn't involve me if I'm a Cosenza.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“Gabriel?”
“There is an amendment.”
“What amendment?”
“Handwritten.”
Salvatore's face hardened.
“By whom?”
“Your father.”
Gabriel read.
“If my daughter's child cannot be located, her inheritance shall pass to the child protected by Elaine Mercer, provided the child carries the silver seal of Caterina Rossi.”
Tessa touched her pendant.
Silence.
Salvatore sat down.
Tessa stared at him.
“You knew about this?”
“No.”
“Your father knew about me?”
“I don't know.”
“He knew my mother.”
“Apparently.”
“He knew the pendant.”
“Yes.”
“And he wrote me into his will.”
“Yes.”
Richard spoke quietly.
“That is why Elaine hid you.”
Tessa turned.
“You knew this?”
“I knew there was money.”
“How much?”
Richard hesitated.
“Richard.”
“A lot.”
“How much?”
Salvatore answered.
“Enough that people would have spent thirty years looking for you.”
Tessa looked at him.
“You inherited half.”
“Yes.”
“And the other half?”
“Was placed into trusts after Caterina was declared dead.”
“Controlled by?”
Salvatore did not answer.
Gabriel did.
“My father.”
Tessa stared at Salvatore.
There it was.
The motive.
Simple.
Ugly.
Money.
“If I appeared…”
Salvatore finished quietly.
“I would lose control of it.”
Tessa stood.
Lucia moved toward her.
“Tessa.”
“No.”
She backed away.
Everything inside her suddenly became clear.
The photograph.
The surveillance.
The hidden birth certificate.
Elaine running.
Antonio living beside her.
Salvatore recognizing the dialect.
“You had the best reason of anyone to keep me hidden.”
“Yes.”
“And I'm supposed to believe you didn't know?”
“I didn't.”
“You controlled the trust.”
“Yes.”
“For thirty years.”
“Yes.”
“And never once wondered why your father wrote the inheritance that way?”
“I never saw that amendment.”
“Convenient.”
Salvatore's expression tightened.
“It is.”
Tessa almost hated him for agreeing.
Richard stepped forward.
“Elaine didn't believe Salvatore knew.”
Tessa turned.
“What?”
“She told me.”
“When?”
“When she arranged your job.”
“Why would she put me in a restaurant where his son ate every week if she was hiding me from the Rossi family?”
Richard looked toward Salvatore.
“Because she wasn't hiding Tessa from them anymore.”
“Then from whom?”
Richard's voice dropped.
“The person controlling the trust behind Salvatore's back.”
Salvatore went completely still.
“What?”
Richard looked at him.
“You signed the papers.”
“What papers?”
“Annual authorizations.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever read the beneficiary management documents?”
“My attorneys handled them.”
Richard gave a humorless smile.
“Then Elaine was right.”
Salvatore stood.
“Right about what?”
“That you never knew where the money was actually going.”
Gabriel spoke through the phone.
“Dad.”
Salvatore looked toward it.
“I have the records here.”
“What records?”
“Transfers.”
“To whom?”
“Companies.”
“What companies?”
“Shell entities.”
Salvatore's face darkened.
“Names.”
Gabriel read them.
Salvatore recognized none.
Richard did.
His expression changed.
Tessa saw it.
“You know them.”
Richard nodded.
“One.”
“Which?”
“Bellini Holdings.”
Lucia went pale.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
Tessa stared at her.
“Your family?”
“No.”
“It's your name.”
“It was Vittorio's company.”
Tessa remembered Vittorio.
The supposedly dead man.
The brother who had returned.
The man who claimed he had been protecting her.
Salvatore whispered, “Vittorio.”
Richard nodded.
“He has been receiving money from the trust for decades.”
“How much?”
Gabriel answered.
“Millions.”
Lucia sank into the chair.
“He told me he had nothing.”
Tessa's anger shifted direction.
“Where is Vittorio?”
Lucia shook her head.
“I don't know.”
“When did you last see him?”
“This morning.”
“After leaving my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“A hotel.”
“Which?”
Lucia gave the name.
Gabriel interrupted.
“Tessa.”
“What?”
“I found something else.”
Paper moved again.
“A letter from Elaine.”
“To whom?”
“You.”
Tessa closed her eyes.
Of course.
“Read it.”
Gabriel hesitated.
“Read it.”
His voice softened.
“Theresa, if this reaches you, then I failed to explain things myself.”
Tessa gripped the table.
“I need you to know one thing before anyone tells you what blood means.”
Gabriel paused.
“The man who raised you as Michael Mercer was your father because he chose you. Antonio protected you because he loved you. Neither truth becomes smaller because of biology.”
Tessa's eyes burned.
She remembered Michael only in fragments.
A laugh.
Large hands.
The smell of coffee.
A red scarf.
Then Antonio.
Tomato sauce.
Sicilian insults.
Graduation.
Hospital corridors.
Two men.
Two fathers in different ways.
Gabriel continued.
“But if you need the biological truth, don't trust the old test. I ordered another one before I became sick.”
Tessa opened her eyes.
“When?”
Gabriel scanned the page.
“2009.”
Her mother had become ill in 2010.
“Where is it?”
Gabriel continued reading.
“The result is sealed with someone who promised never to open it unless Theresa herself asked.”
Tessa's pulse accelerated.
“Who?”
Gabriel stopped.
“Gabriel?”
“The next line is damaged.”
“Can you read anything?”
“One word.”
“What?”
“Priest.”
Salvatore's head snapped up.
Lucia whispered, “Father Benedetto.”
Salvatore stared at her.
“He's alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Lucia swallowed.
“Brooklyn.”
Tessa nearly laughed.
After Sicily.
After hidden rooms.
After thirty years of lies.
The answer might have been a subway ride away.
“Address.”
Lucia gave it.
Tessa grabbed her coat.
Salvatore moved.
“I'm coming.”
“No.”
“Tessa.”
“No.”
He stopped.
She looked at him.
“If there is a DNA result, I need to see it without anyone standing over my shoulder.”
His expression softened.
“All right.”
Richard offered to drive.
Tessa refused.
She took a cab.
The church stood between a laundromat and an apartment building.
Small.
Old.
Quiet.
Father Benedetto was eighty-six.
He listened to Tessa's name.
Then he sat down.
“I wondered when you would come.”
Tessa almost screamed.
Instead she said, “Apparently everyone did.”
The priest smiled sadly.
“Your mother made me promise.”
“I know.”
He disappeared into the rectory.
Returned carrying a metal box.
He unlocked it.
Inside was a sealed envelope.
THERESA MERCER.
Tessa took it.
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“You know what's inside?”
“Only that your mother cried when she gave it to me.”
Tessa opened the envelope.
A laboratory report.
Newer than Carlo's.
Two pages.
The first confirmed her sample.
The second contained the biological comparison.
Tessa stared at the name.
Then read it again.
Her knees weakened.
“No.”
Father Benedetto watched quietly.
The result was definitive.
99.99%.
Her biological father was neither Antonio nor Matteo.
Tessa whispered the name.
Then her phone rang.
Gabriel.
She answered.
“Tessa, don't go back to your apartment.”
Her heart stopped.
“Why?”
“Vittorio is gone.”
“I know.”
“No. You don't understand.”
Gabriel's breathing was fast.
“I found the rest of Elaine's records.”
“What do they say?”
“Vittorio wasn't protecting you.”
Tessa looked down at the DNA report.
“Gabriel—”
“He was the one looking for you.”
The church door opened behind her.
Tessa turned.
Father Benedetto went pale.
A man stepped inside.
Gray coat.
Silver hair.
Vittorio Bellini.
He locked the church door.
Then his eyes dropped to the DNA report in Tessa's hand.
“You opened it.”
Tessa backed toward the altar.
Vittorio smiled sadly.
“Then you finally know who your father is.”
A second figure appeared behind him.
Tessa recognized the man immediately.
May you like
The name printed on the DNA report was still trembling in her hand.
And the man it belonged to had just walked through the door...
