Chapter 2
For twenty-three years, I had believed my father was dead.
Now a five-year-old girl was pointing toward a stranger wearing his ring.
Nobody in the ballroom moved.
Not Marcus.
Not Clara.
Not even Luca, whose hand had instinctively disappeared beneath his jacket.
The elderly man stood beyond the glass balcony doors as calmly as if he had been invited.
Silver hair.
Black suit.
A narrow scar crossing his left cheek.
But I barely noticed any of those things.
All I could see was the ring.
Black onyx.
Gold crest.
A tiny crack running diagonally through the stone.
I knew that crack.
When I was seven, I had watched my father strike a marble table during an argument. The ring had chipped against the edge.
My mother had begged him to replace it.
He never did.
“Open the doors,” I said.
Luca glanced at me.
“Dante—”
“Open them.”
Two guards moved toward the balcony.
The old man didn’t run.
He simply watched them approach.
Then Clara shouted.
“Wait!”
Everyone turned.
She still held Sophie tightly against her chest, but the frightened maid I had known for six years seemed to have vanished.
Her shoulders were straight.
Her voice was steady.
Her eyes were fixed on the stranger.
“Don’t let him inside.”
I stared at her.
“Five minutes ago, you were serving champagne.”
Clara swallowed.
“And five minutes ago, I was still trying to keep you alive.”
That sentence changed the room.
I stepped toward her.
“Who are you?”
Sophie buried her face against her mother’s shoulder.
Clara kissed her hair.
Then she looked at Luca.
“Take Sophie somewhere safe.”
“No.”
Her answer came instantly.
“Clara—”
“I said no.”
I had never heard her speak to me that way.
Marcus finally moved.
“Listen to her, Dante.”
I turned on him.
“You don’t get to give advice.”
“You need to hear this.”
“I need to know why you put an electronic device inside a box carrying Clara’s name.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“It isn’t a bomb.”
“Convenient.”
“It’s a transmitter.”
Luca looked toward the box.
“For what?”
Marcus hesitated.
Clara answered for him.
“For him.”
She nodded toward the balcony.
The old man smiled.
A slow, knowing smile.
My stomach twisted.
“What happens if the box opens?”
“The transmitter activates,” Clara said. “A signal goes out.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to stay alive long enough to learn the truth.”
I looked again at the stranger.
He lifted his right hand.
The black ring caught the chandelier light.
Then he tapped the glass three times.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
My heart stopped.
It was something my father used to do.
Three knocks against my bedroom door every night.
Always three.
Never two.
Never four.
Three.
Even when he was angry.
Even when he returned home after midnight.
Three knocks.
Then he would enter and say the same words.
Still awake, lion?
A memory I had buried for more than two decades came rushing back so violently that for a moment I wasn’t standing in my ballroom.
I was eight years old again.
Bare feet against cold marble.
My father’s enormous hand resting on my shoulder.
His voice telling me never to trust a man simply because he called himself family.
“Dante.”
Clara’s voice brought me back.
The old man pointed at himself.
Then at me.
And mouthed two words through the glass.
My son.
I moved toward the balcony.
Clara stepped in front of me.
“Don’t.”
“If that’s my father—”
“It isn’t.”
I froze.
She said it with absolute certainty.
I stared at her.
“How could you possibly know?”
Clara’s eyes filled with something I couldn’t identify.
Not fear.
Grief.
“Because I knew your father.”
Marcus lowered his head.
That was when I understood.
They both knew.
Marcus.
Clara.
Maybe Luca.
Maybe everyone except me.
I grabbed Marcus by the jacket and slammed him against the nearest pillar.
Glasses rattled on a nearby table.
“Tell me the truth.”
Marcus didn’t fight back.
“You won’t like it.”
“I stopped caring what I like twenty-three years ago.”
His eyes shifted toward Clara.
She gave the smallest nod.
Marcus exhaled.
“Your father didn’t die in that warehouse fire.”
My grip tightened.
“I know that now.”
“No,” Marcus said quietly. “You don’t.”
Something in his voice made me release him.
He straightened his jacket.
“The body recovered from the warehouse belonged to another man.”
“Who?”
“Your father’s driver.”
My mouth went dry.
For years, I had remembered the funeral.
The closed coffin.
My mother’s black veil.
Hundreds of men lining the church steps.
My uncle telling me I was the man of the family now.
I had been nine years old.
“Why fake his death?”
Marcus stared directly at me.
“To disappear.”
“From whom?”
“From you.”
The answer landed harder than any punch.
I stepped back.
“Careful.”
“Dante—”
“Careful.”
Marcus lowered his voice.
“Your father wasn’t the man you remember.”
“You didn’t know him.”
“I knew him better than you did.”
I nearly struck him.
Then Clara said something that stopped me.
“So did I.”
I turned toward her.
Sophie had lifted her head.
The child was watching us silently.
Clara stroked her daughter’s hair.
“Your father came to my family when I was seventeen.”
“Why?”
“My father worked for him.”
“Doing what?”
“Keeping records.”
I almost laughed.
“My father had accountants.”
“Not those kinds of records.”
Clara looked toward the black box.
“He documented everything your organization did. Payments. Meetings. Names. Properties. Judges. Police officers. Politicians. Every person your father owned and every person who owned a piece of him.”
Marcus added quietly, “Insurance.”
Clara nodded.
“Your father trusted nobody.”
“Where are those records?”
“Gone.”
“Destroyed?”
Clara shook her head.
“Hidden.”
The old man outside knocked again.
Three times.
Then the lights went out.
Sophie screamed.
Chaos exploded.
Women shouted.
Someone knocked over a table.
Glass shattered.
Luca grabbed my arm.
“Down!”
He pulled me behind a marble column.
My guards drew their weapons.
Emergency lights flickered red along the walls.
“Seal the exits!” Luca shouted.
A gunshot cracked somewhere outside.
Then another.
Clara screamed Sophie’s name.
I looked across the darkness.
Mother and daughter were gone.
“CLARA!”
No answer.
Marcus rushed toward the kitchen corridor.
I caught him.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“You planned this!”
“No!”
The emergency lights came fully alive.
The balcony doors were open.
The old man had disappeared.
Cold night air swept into the ballroom.
A red curtain billowed inward.
And the black box was gone.
I stared at the empty table.
“Who took it?”
Nobody answered.
Then Luca found something on the floor.
Sophie’s blue ribbon.
Clara had said Sophie lost it in the east gallery.
Yet there it was.
Beside the balcony.
Luca picked it up.
There was a tiny streak of blood across the fabric.
Every sound inside me disappeared.
“Find them.”
My men scattered.
“Dante,” Marcus said.
I turned.
“If anything happens to that child, I will personally—”
“She isn’t the target.”
“How do you know?”
Marcus looked terrified now.
Not for himself.
For me.
“Because you are.”
Before I could answer, his phone rang.
He stared at the screen.
Unknown number.
“Answer it.”
He did.
No voice came through.
Only a recording.
A man’s voice.
Old.
Calm.
Familiar enough to make every hair on my arms rise.
“Still awake, lion?”
My knees nearly failed me.
Nobody else in that room understood those words.
Nobody except my father.
The recording continued.
“If you’re hearing this, then Marcus failed to keep you away from the box.”
Marcus went pale.
The voice chuckled softly.
“You always were curious.”
Then:
“Come to the east gallery alone.”
The call ended.
Luca immediately shook his head.
“Absolutely not.”
I was already walking.
“Dante.”
“Stay here.”
“It’s a trap.”
“Obviously.”
“That doesn’t mean you walk into it.”
I stopped.
“Someone took Clara and Sophie.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I found Sophie’s ribbon covered in blood.”
Luca looked at Marcus.
Marcus said nothing.
That silence bothered me more than anything else.
I pointed at him.
“Watch Marcus.”
Then I headed for the east gallery.
The hallway seemed longer than I remembered.
Portraits of dead Valente men watched from the walls.
My grandfather.
My uncles.
My father.
I stopped beneath his portrait.
The painting had hung there since I inherited the estate.
Antonio Valente at forty-two.
Dark hair.
Cold eyes.
The same black ring.
I looked toward the balcony doors at the far end.
The man I had seen outside was older.
But the resemblance was undeniable.
Maybe Clara was wrong.
Maybe grief had made her afraid.
Maybe my father had survived.
Maybe everything I believed about my life had been built around a lie.
I entered the gallery.
“Father?”
Nothing.
Then a lamp switched on.
Clara sat in the center of the room.
Alone.
“Sophie?”
“Safe.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere nobody can use her against us.”
I looked around.
“You weren’t kidnapped.”
“No.”
“The blood?”
“Mine.”
She showed me her palm.
A shallow cut crossed it.
“You staged everything.”
“I needed to get Sophie away from the ballroom.”
My anger rose.
“You could have asked.”
“No, Dante. I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know whether you’d choose her over him.”
She pointed toward my father’s portrait.
I stared at her.
“You’re going to explain everything.”
“Yes.”
“Starting with the man outside.”
Clara stood.
“His name is Victor Salazar.”
I had heard the name.
Anyone in my world had.
Victor Salazar had once controlled shipping routes from Marseille to New York. He disappeared twenty years ago.
“He worked with my father?”
“He hated your father.”
“Then why does he have his ring?”
“Because he took it from Antonio the night he died.”
I stared at her.
“You just said my father survived the warehouse.”
“He did.”
“For how long?”
Clara’s voice softened.
“Eleven years.”
My chest tightened.
My father had survived until I was twenty.
All those birthdays.
All those Christmases.
All those nights I had wondered whether he would have been proud of me.
He had been alive.
“Where?”
“Different places. Switzerland. Argentina. Portugal. Eventually Canada.”
“And he never contacted me?”
“He tried.”
“No.”
“He did.”
I stepped closer.
“I would remember my father calling.”
“You never received the messages.”
“Why?”
“Because someone intercepted them.”
“Who?”
Clara hesitated.
That hesitation gave me the answer.
“Marcus?”
“No.”
“Luca?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Her eyes filled with pity.
And I suddenly hated her for looking at me that way.
“Your mother.”
I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.
The idea was absurd.
“My mother spent fifteen years mourning him.”
“Your mother spent fifteen years making sure he never came home.”
I stared at her.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“My mother died believing he was dead.”
“No.”
Clara reached into her apron.
She removed an envelope.
Old.
Yellowed.
My name was written across the front.
DANTE.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
My father’s.
My fingers shook as I opened it.
Inside was a single page.
Dante,
If this reaches you, then I have failed to return.
There are things about our family you must learn before you trust anyone wearing our name.
Especially your mother.
I stopped reading.
My throat tightened.
Clara remained silent.
I forced myself to continue.
The letter described accounts.
A property.
Something called Project Orpheus.
Then one final instruction.
Find Elena.
She knows what happened.
I looked up.
“Who’s Elena?”
Clara’s face changed.
Before she could answer, a slow clap came from the darkness.
Marcus stepped into the gallery.
I reached for my weapon.
“Stop,” he said.
“You were supposed to be downstairs.”
“Luca let me go.”
“Why?”
“Because he read the message.”
“What message?”
Marcus held up his phone.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
Sophie.
She was sitting safely inside a car beside Luca.
Underneath the image were five words.
BRING DANTE TO THE CHAPEL.
“Victor sent it,” Marcus said.
Clara shook her head.
“No. He wants us separated.”
“Why the chapel?” I asked.
Marcus looked at Clara.
Again, that silent communication.
Again, the feeling that everyone knew my life except me.
I snapped.
“STOP LOOKING AT EACH OTHER AND ANSWER ME!”
Clara flinched.
Marcus finally spoke.
“Because that’s where your father is buried.”
“I’ve visited his grave.”
“Not that grave.”
Twenty minutes later, the three of us stood beneath the abandoned family chapel behind the estate.
I had passed it thousands of times.
Never once had I known there was a room beneath it.
Marcus pulled an iron lever behind the altar.
Stone scraped against stone.
A narrow staircase appeared.
Clara switched on a flashlight.
We descended.
The air smelled of dust and damp earth.
At the bottom stood a steel door.
No handle.
Only a keypad.
Marcus entered six numbers.
The door opened.
Inside was not a tomb.
It was an archive.
Shelves covered every wall.
Files.
Photographs.
Videotapes.
Hard drives.
Ledgers.
Decades of secrets.
I walked inside slowly.
“What is this?”
“Your father’s insurance policy,” Clara said.
I opened the nearest file.
A senator’s name.
Another contained photographs of a police commissioner accepting cash.
Another held bank statements.
Then I found something worse.
A file with my name.
DANTE VALENTE.
My hands went cold.
I opened it.
School photographs.
Medical records.
Letters.
Pictures of me taken without my knowledge.
Age twelve.
Fourteen.
Sixteen.
Eighteen.
My father had been watching me.
The final photograph showed me leaving my university graduation.
On the back was a handwritten sentence.
He became better than me.
I sat down.
For the first time that night, anger abandoned me.
What remained was grief.
“He saw me graduate?”
Clara nodded.
“From across the street.”
“Why didn’t he come to me?”
“Because people were watching you.”
“Who?”
“Victor.”
I looked at her.
“You said Victor hated him.”
“He did.”
“Why?”
Marcus answered.
“Because your father destroyed Victor’s family.”
The room fell silent.
“Antonio and Victor built an organization together,” Marcus continued. “Then your father discovered Victor was using their network for things Antonio wouldn’t tolerate.”
“What things?”
Marcus’s expression told me enough.
“Your father turned against him.”
“Then what?”
“War.”
Clara walked toward a locked cabinet.
“Antonio eventually realized the only way to protect you was to disappear.”
“And my mother?”
“She helped him fake his death.”
I stared at her.
“You said she kept him away.”
“She did. Later.”
“Why?”
Clara unlocked the cabinet.
“Because she discovered why he really disappeared.”
Inside was one red folder.
She handed it to me.
On the front were two words.
ELENA VALENTE.
I frowned.
“Valente?”
Clara nodded.
“Your father’s daughter.”
I couldn’t speak.
“My sister?”
“Half-sister.”
The world seemed to tilt beneath me.
“My father had another child?”
“Before he married your mother.”
“Where is she?”
“Nobody knows.”
I remembered the letter.
Find Elena.
She knows what happened.
I opened the folder.
The first page contained a birth certificate.
Elena Sofia Valente.
Father: Antonio Valente.
Mother: Isabel Alvarez.
Alvarez.
I slowly looked at Clara.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
She didn’t answer.
“Clara.”
“My mother was Elena’s younger sister.”
I stared at her.
That made Clara—
“My cousin?”
“Second cousin, technically.”
I almost laughed from shock.
Six years.
She had lived under my roof for six years.
Prepared my coffee.
Cleaned my office.
Watched my meetings.
Raised her daughter ten rooms away from me.
“Why become my maid?”
“To watch you.”
“For Victor?”
“For Antonio.”
“My father sent you?”
“He asked my mother to protect you if anything happened to him.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know whether you’d become him.”
The words hurt.
Clara stepped closer.
“When I arrived here, Dante Valente was a name people whispered with fear. I needed to know whether you were Antonio’s son…”
She paused.
“…or his successor.”
“And?”
A faint smile touched her face.
“Then I watched you secretly pay the hospital bills for Luca’s mother.”
I said nothing.
“I watched you fire a man for striking a waiter.”
She continued.
“I watched you spend three hours helping Sophie build a cardboard castle because you promised her you would.”
My throat tightened.
“You decided I was good?”
“No.”
Her smile became sad.
“I decided you were trying.”
Before I could answer, something beeped behind us.
The black box sat on a shelf.
I hadn’t seen it when we entered.
Marcus went rigid.
“That wasn’t here before.”
Clara backed away.
The red ribbon had been removed.
The lid was slightly open.
A green light blinked inside.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then every monitor in the archive switched on.
Dozens of screens illuminated the underground room.
A man’s face appeared.
Victor Salazar.
“Good evening, Dante.”
Marcus reached for a cable.
“Don’t touch anything,” Clara warned.
Victor smiled from the screens.
“If you’re watching this, congratulations. Antonio’s little maze finally brought you where I wanted you.”
My blood chilled.
“This was never about the box,” Marcus whispered.
Victor continued.
“It was about opening the archive.”
A mechanical sound came from behind us.
The steel door locked.
Clara rushed toward it.
Too late.
Red lights appeared above the shelves.
Victor leaned closer to the camera.
“Your father stole twenty-three years from me. Tonight, his son gives them back.”
Smoke began pouring through vents near the ceiling.
Marcus tore off his jacket and wrapped it around his hand.
“We need another exit!”
Clara ran toward the shelves.
“There is one.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother showed me the plans.”
She pulled three files from a shelf and pressed something behind them.
A section of wall moved.
A narrow tunnel appeared.
We ran.
Behind us, the archive filled with smoke.
The tunnel was barely wide enough for one person.
Clara went first.
I followed.
Marcus came last.
Then an explosion shook the passage.
Dust rained from the ceiling.
“Move!” Marcus shouted.
We climbed upward.
Clara shoved open a metal hatch.
Cold air hit my face.
We emerged inside the estate greenhouse.
Luca was waiting.
Sophie ran toward Clara.
“Mama!”
Clara dropped to her knees and wrapped her daughter in her arms.
For one brief moment, everyone forgot Victor.
Then Luca looked at me.
“We have a bigger problem.”
“Bigger than someone trying to burn us alive?”
He handed me a tablet.
Security footage showed the front gates.
Police vehicles.
Federal vehicles.
News vans.
Dozens of them.
“What happened?”
“The archive transmitted everything.”
My stomach dropped.
“All the files?”
“Looks like it.”
Marcus cursed.
Victor hadn’t wanted to destroy the evidence.
He had wanted it released.
Every judge.
Every official.
Every account.
Every crime.
Every Valente secret.
Including mine.
Sirens grew louder outside.
Then Sophie’s tiny voice broke through the chaos.
“Uncle Dante?”
I looked down.
She was holding something.
A small silver object.
The same thing she had described Marcus putting inside the black box.
“You shouldn’t have that.”
“Mr. Marcus gave it to me.”
Everyone turned toward Marcus.
His face drained of color.
“I did not.”
Sophie frowned.
“Yes, you did.”
“When?”
“Before the party.”
Marcus shook his head.
“I never spoke to Sophie before the party.”
The child looked confused.
Then she pointed at him.
“He looked like you.”
Silence.
My pulse slowed.
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“The other Uncle Marcus.”
Marcus stopped breathing.
Clara knelt beside Sophie.
“Tell us exactly what you saw.”
Sophie squeezed the silver object.
“He had Uncle Marcus’s face, but his hair was different.”
My eyes moved toward Marcus.
He whispered, “No.”
“What?”
Marcus stepped backward.
“That isn’t possible.”
“WHAT ISN’T POSSIBLE?”
His face had become ghost-white.
“My brother.”
I stared at him.
“You don’t have a brother.”
“I did.”
“Did?”
Marcus swallowed.
“Matteo died seventeen years ago.”
Sophie shook her head.
“No.”
We all looked at her.
The little girl pointed toward the greenhouse windows.
“He’s right there.”
A man stood outside.
Same height as Marcus.
Same face.
Same eyes.
But gray streaked his hair.
He smiled at us through the glass.
Marcus stumbled backward.
“Matteo?”
The stranger lifted a phone.
Mine rang.
I answered.
His voice came through calmly.
“Hello, Dante.”
“Who are you?”
“You already know.”
“Why are you doing this?”
His smile disappeared.
“Because Antonio Valente didn’t destroy my family.”
He paused.
“He created it.”
I looked at Marcus.
Marcus looked equally confused.
Matteo continued.
“Ask Clara who Elena really was.”
Clara’s face went completely white.
I turned toward her.
“Clara?”
She clutched Sophie tighter.
“Don’t.”
“Tell me.”
Matteo laughed softly through the phone.
“She still hasn’t figured it out, Dante.”
“Figured out what?”
“The woman everyone has been searching for.”
My heartbeat thundered.
Matteo raised his free hand and pointed through the glass.
Not at Clara.
At Sophie.
“No,” Clara whispered.
Matteo’s voice dropped.
“Antonio didn’t hide his greatest secret in Switzerland, Argentina, or Canada.”
Sophie stared at us with frightened eyes.
“He hid it in plain sight.”
Clara began crying.
I looked at the little girl.
Then at the silver device in her hand.
There was an engraving on its side.
I took it gently.
Three letters.
E.V.S.
Elena Valente Salazar.
My mind raced.
Elena.
Victor Salazar.
The missing daughter.
The bloodline everyone had spent decades searching for.
I looked at Matteo through the glass.
“What does Sophie have to do with Elena?”
His answer destroyed everything I thought I understood.
“Sophie isn’t Clara’s daughter.”
Clara made a broken sound.
I turned toward her.
“Tell me he’s lying.”
She couldn’t.
“CLARA.”
Tears streamed down her face.
“I promised I would protect her.”
“Protect her from whom?”
Clara looked toward Matteo.
Then toward the police lights flooding the estate.
“From everyone.”
I stared at Sophie.
The five-year-old girl who had interrupted my celebration.
The child who had saved my life.
The little girl I had known since infancy.
Suddenly every secret in the room seemed to revolve around her.
Matteo spoke again.
“Now you understand why the box had Clara’s name.”
I looked at the device.
“No.”
“You were never supposed to die tonight, Dante.”
“Then who was?”
His smile returned.
“Nobody.”
I froze.
“This wasn’t an assassination.”
“Then what was it?”
“A test.”
“For what?”
“To see whether Antonio’s son would sacrifice himself to protect Antonio’s last heir.”
I looked at Sophie.
My blood ran cold.
Matteo stepped closer to the glass.
“And you passed.”
Before I could speak, the greenhouse doors behind us opened.
Federal agents flooded inside.
“Hands where we can see them!”
Luca raised his hands.
Marcus did the same.
I turned back toward the window.
Matteo was gone.
Clara held Sophie against her chest.
An agent approached me.
“Dante Valente?”
“Yes.”
“You need to come with us.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“Then why?”
The agent glanced at Sophie.
“Because approximately seven minutes ago, an encrypted archive containing twenty-three years of evidence was delivered simultaneously to federal agencies in six countries.”
I stared at him.
“And?”
“Attached to that archive was a legal document.”
“What document?”
He hesitated.
“The last will and testament of Antonio Valente.”
My father.
“What does it say?”
The agent looked uncomfortable.
“You should read it yourself.”
He handed me a sealed envelope.
My hands trembled as I opened it.
The first paragraph was legal language.
The second concerned assets.
The third contained a sentence that made the entire greenhouse disappear around me.
Upon my death, control of the Valente estate shall pass not to my biological descendants, but to the person who proves worthy of protecting them.
I read further.
Then stopped.
My name was there.
So was Sophie’s.
And beneath both names was one final handwritten note from my father.
Dante,
If Sophie is standing beside you when you read this, then Clara kept her promise and Marcus kept his.
Trust them.
Protect the child.
But do not trust the man wearing my ring.
I slowly lowered the paper.
The ring.
Victor.
I looked toward Clara.
“There’s more.”
She shook her head.
“Dante…”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Before she could answer, Sophie tugged gently on my sleeve.
“Uncle Dante?”
I crouched beside her.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
She reached into the pocket of her yellow dress.
“I found something behind the curtain.”
She placed an old photograph in my hand.
Four people stood in front of this very estate.
My father.
A young Victor Salazar.
A woman I assumed was Elena.
And a teenage boy.
I stared at him.
Same eyes.
Same jaw.
Same face I saw every morning in the mirror.
On the back, someone had written a date.
It was ten months before I was born.
Below it were six words.
ANTONIO DOESN’T KNOW THE BOY IS HIS.
I read the sentence twice.
Then a third time.
It made no sense.
Unless the boy wasn’t me.
My phone rang again.
Unknown number.
I answered.
This time, a woman’s voice spoke.
“Dante?”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Who is this?”
She began crying.
“My name is Elena.”
Every person around me became silent.
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“Elena Valente?”
“No.”
A pause.
Then she said the words that shattered the last certainty I had left.
“Elena Salazar.”
I looked through the greenhouse windows toward the darkness where Matteo had disappeared.
The woman continued.
“And before you trust Clara, Marcus, Victor, or anyone else, you need to know one thing.”
“What?”
“Antonio Valente was not your father.”
My heart stopped.
May you like
She whispered one final sentence.
“Victor Salazar was.”
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