Chapter 4 - Bloodlines and Ashes
The silence in the study was deafening.
Liana stared at Matteo as he slowly repeated the words from the text message out loud.
“A twin?” Liana whispered, her head spinning. “No... I was an only child. My mother raised me alone in a two-room apartment in Queens. She never said anything about a twin!”
“Your mother was broke,” Matteo said, his voice cold and analytical as he paced the room. “Giulia’s adoptive father, Vincent Moretti, was a high-ranking lieutenant in the Chicago syndicate who couldn't have children. Twenty-six years ago, a private arrangement was made at St. Vincent Hospital. One baby girl was kept by the birth mother. The other was sold to the Morettis for half a million dollars.”
Liana felt sick to her stomach. Her entire life—her childhood, her mother's desperate struggles to pay rent, the endless hospital bills before her mother died—had been built on a lie.
“Giulia was raised in luxury,” Matteo continued, his eyes darkening as he looked at the portrait on the wall. “She was brought to New York four years ago to unite the Moretti and Varric families through marriage. I married her to end a turf war.”
“Did you love her?” Liana asked softly, before she could catch herself.
Matteo stopped pacing. He looked down at Liana, his dark eyes unreadable. “I respected her. She was smart, quiet, and kept out of my business. But six months into our marriage, I found out she was sending large wire transfers to an undisclosed offshore account. When I asked her about it, she claimed it was for charity.”
He stepped closer to Liana, pointing a finger at the sleeping baby.
“Three weeks ago, my mother came to me and said Nico was sick,” Matteo said, his jaw tightening. “She said the baby needed specialized care in the west wing. She wouldn't let me near the nursery at night. Every time I tried to see him, she told me he was sleeping, that my presence was agitating him.”
Liana’s eyes widened. “Your mother knew.”
Before Matteo could answer, the door to the study burst open.
Donna Elena walked in, backed by four armed guards with heavy automatic pistols. The old woman was no longer trembling. Her face was locked in a mask of absolute, aristocratic cruelty.
“That is enough, Matteo,” Donna Elena said, raising a small pearl-handled revolver and aiming it directly at Liana's chest. “You have dug far enough into things that do not concern you.”
Matteo instantly stepped between his mother’s gun and Liana, placing his tall frame in the line of fire. “Put the weapon down, Mother.”
“I did what was necessary for this family!” Donna Elena spat, her eyes flashing with old hatred. “Giulia was a traitor, Matteo! Two months before she died, she discovered that she had a twin sister living in Queens. She found out Liana was pregnant at the same time she was!”
Liana gasped from behind Matteo's back.
“Giulia came to me,” Donna Elena confessed, her voice filled with venom. “She told me she was going to take her baby, leave the Varric family, and go live a quiet life with her sister! She was going to break the alliance! She was going to destroy everything we built!”
“What did you do, Mother?” Matteo asked, his voice dropping into a register so terrifying that even the guards shifted uncomfortably.
“I arranged her car crash,” Donna Elena said without a flinch. “But the child survived in her womb. When Nico was born that night, the doctors told me he had severe brain damage from the oxygen deprivation during the crash. He was dying, Matteo! He wouldn't have survived the month!”
Donna Elena pointed her gun at Liana.
“So I fixed it,” the matriarch cold-bloodedly explained. “I knew her twin sister was giving birth on the lower floor that exact same night. I paid Dr. Mercer to swap the infants. I took Liana’s healthy baby boy and put him in our nursery as the Varric heir. And I sent Giulia’s dying child to Liana’s crib!”
Liana let out a shriek of pure, agonizing grief. The baby in her arms woke up, terrified by her scream, and began to cry.
The child she had buried twenty-two days ago—the tiny baby whose headstone she had kissed in the rain—was Giulia’s dying infant.
And the healthy, breathing boy holding onto her shirt right now... was her own son.
May you like
“You monster!” Liana screamed, trying to charge past Matteo, but he caught her around her waist, holding her back.
“It was for the family!” Donna Elena yelled, her fingers tightening on the trigger. “A weak, dying heir would have destroyed our standing with the Chicago families! I gave you a healthy son, Matteo! Now step aside and let me finish cleaning up this mess!”
