Chapter 3 - THE SON LUCA NEVER KNEW EXISTED
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I felt was Sofia’s wedding ring cutting into my palm.
The second was terror.
Matteo was gone.
I lay on the marble floor beneath the red emergency lights while men coughed around me and broken glass glittered like ice. The poison in the ventilation had weakened, but my lungs still burned with every breath.
“Elena,” I rasped.
She was curled beside the wall, barely conscious.
I crawled toward her, dragged her upright, and gripped her shoulders.
**“What did you mean? What other child?”**
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Sofia’s daughter.”
The words struck me harder than the gas.
I stared at her.
“Sofia never had a daughter.”
“Yes,” Elena whispered. “She did.”
I tightened my grip.
“Mine?”
She looked away.
That single movement nearly destroyed me.
“Elena.”
“Sofia believed the child was yours,” she said. “But she could never prove it.”
My heart began pounding.
“How old?”
“Eight.”
Eight years.
Sofia and I had been married for six.
The room seemed to tilt.
“That’s impossible.”
“No. It means Sofia had her before she met you.”
A daughter hidden before our marriage.
A child Sofia had never mentioned.
A child who might now be in the hands of the same people who had poisoned Matteo.
I forced myself to stand.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer awakened the part of me Chicago feared.
I pulled my gun from the floor.
“You have five seconds to remember.”
Elena did not flinch.
“Sofia called her Isabella. She left her at Saint Catherine’s Children’s Home under another name. She believed the people hunting her would use the girl to control her.”
“Why would anyone hunt Sofia before she knew me?”
“Because Sofia was not who you thought she was.”
A weak groan came from the corridor.
Dr. Pierce was alive.
Two guards helped him up while the others searched the house. The attackers had vanished. Dante’s helicopter had lifted from the east garden twelve minutes earlier.
Pierce examined the residue from the ventilation system.
“Nonlethal incapacitating compound,” he said. “They wanted us unconscious, not dead.”
“Dante wanted Matteo alive.”
“So did someone else,” Elena said.
I turned toward her.
She pointed to the broken window.
“The sniper fired at me before Dante entered. Dante’s people stopped the shooting. There were two teams.”
Two enemies.
One brother returned from the dead.
A secret daughter.
And my son’s heart failing by the hour.
I ordered every available man to search flight routes, private landing pads, hospitals, and clinics within five hundred miles.
Then I called the one person who had never failed to find anyone.
Gabriel Moretti.
My father’s younger brother.
He answered on the first ring.
“Luca?”
“Dante is alive.”
Silence.
Not surprise.
Silence.
That told me everything.
“You knew,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“You knew my brother was alive.”
“Luca, listen to me.”
“Did you know about Sofia’s daughter too?”
His breath caught.
I closed my eyes.
**“You knew everything.”**
Gabriel spoke quietly.
“Come to the old church on Halsted. Alone.”
“I am done being ordered around.”
“If you want to see Matteo alive again, you will come.”
The call ended.
An hour later, I walked into the abandoned church where my parents had once taken us every Sunday.
Dust covered the pews.
Rain leaked through the roof.
Gabriel stood near the altar holding no weapon.
He looked older than he had the day before.
“You betrayed me,” I said.
“I protected you.”
“You let me bury Sofia.”
“I let you bury an empty coffin.”
My gun was in my hand before he finished.
Gabriel did not move.
“Sofia survived the attack,” he said. “Barely.”
The world went silent.
“No.”
“She was taken before you reached the hospital.”
“By whom?”
“Your father.”
“My father was dead.”
Gabriel’s face hardened.
“The man you called Father never died. He changed names, changed faces, and continued building an empire beneath yours.”
I wanted to laugh.
I wanted to shoot him.
Instead, I stood frozen.
“His real name is Vittorio Serra,” Gabriel continued. “He built the Moretti family by trafficking experimental medical compounds through charities and private clinics. Children without powerful families were used as test subjects.”
My stomach turned.
“Matteo.”
“Was chosen because Vittorio wanted leverage over you.”
“Why?”
“Because you refused to expand the medical network.”
I remembered arguments from years earlier. Anonymous investors. Clinics I had rejected because their books were unclear. Men Gabriel had advised me not to trust.
The poison had never been about revenge.
It was business.
Gabriel took one step closer.
“Dante discovered the truth at seventeen. Vittorio tried to kill him at the lake. I helped Dante escape.”
“You let me believe he drowned.”
“To keep you alive.”
My gun trembled.
“And Sofia?”
“She discovered Vittorio’s operation. Dante tried to extract her after the car attack, but Vittorio’s men took her first.”
“Is she alive?”
Gabriel’s eyes filled with something I had never seen in them before.
Shame.
“I don’t know.”
I nearly pulled the trigger.
Then a child’s voice came from behind the altar.
“Uncle Gabriel?”
A little girl stepped into view.
She had dark brown hair, pale skin, and gray-blue eyes identical to Matteo’s.
My knees weakened.
Gabriel rested a hand on her shoulder.
“Luca,” he said, “this is Isabella.”
She stared at me with solemn curiosity.
“Are you Matteo’s papa?”
I could barely breathe.
“Yes.”
Her chin trembled.
May you like
“Then you’re the man Mommy said would come when the monsters found us.”
**And in that moment, I understood that Sofia had not hidden Isabella from me because she did not trust me. She had hidden her because she believed loving me would eventually bring death to every child she touched.**
