Chapter 10
My first instinct was immediate.
No.
Then I saw our father in the answer.
I forced myself to breathe.
“I would ask you not to.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No,” I said. “I would not stop you.”
Patrick looked away.
His eyes shone in the dim light.
“Thank you.”
It was not forgiveness.
It was not reunion.
But it was the first piece of trust he had handed me.
I accepted it carefully.
A knock sounded from the kitchen.
Beatrice appeared in the doorway.
“Someone is outside.”
Every softness in the room vanished.
I moved to the front window and looked through the narrow edge of the curtain.
A car sat at the curb.
Not the black sedan from earlier.
A dark blue sedan.
The driver’s door opened.
Lorenzo stepped out alone.
Patrick moved behind me.
“How did he find us?”
“He did not know about this house.”
“Apparently someone did.”
Lorenzo approached the gate slowly, hands visible.
He looked toward the front windows but did not knock.
Instead, he placed a thick envelope on the snow-covered step.
Then he returned to his car.
He did not drive away.
“He wants us to come out,” Beatrice said.
“No,” Patrick replied. “He wants us to choose.”
I watched Lorenzo through the curtain.
He stood beside the car in the snow, coat open, making no attempt to hide.
I opened the front door.
“Adrian,” Beatrice said.
“I am not inviting him inside.”
The cold entered immediately.
Lorenzo looked at me across the garden.
His face showed relief, then caution.
“You followed me,” I said.
“No.”
“You found a house no one knows I own.”
“I know.”
“How?”
He glanced toward the windows.
“Your mother told my father about it.”
The answer disturbed me more than a lie would have.
“What is in the envelope?”
“Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That Patrick was not taken because of the business.”
I stepped onto the porch.
Lorenzo remained by the gate.
“Then why?”
“Because your father believed Patrick was not his son.”
Behind me, the floor creaked.
Patrick had heard.
Lorenzo’s eyes shifted toward the doorway.
“I found the Saint Matthew’s files because Daniel Cross’s name appeared on a payment record,” he said. “But Cross was not just one of your father’s associates.”
“Who was he?”
Lorenzo looked at Patrick.
Then back at me.
“He was the man your mother loved before she married Vittorio Vale.”
The snow fell between us.
Quiet.
Steady.
Almost gentle.
I felt Patrick come to stand behind me.
Neither of us spoke.
Lorenzo pointed toward the envelope.
“There are letters inside. Medical records. A photograph. I did not know whether they were real until this week.”
Patrick’s voice was barely audible.
“What photograph?”
Lorenzo swallowed.
“One taken the day you were born.”
Beatrice came to the doorway.
“Why would that matter?” she asked.
Lorenzo’s face tightened.
“Because Daniel Cross is holding Patrick.”
No one moved.
Patrick reached for the doorframe.
I looked at him, but his eyes were fixed on Lorenzo.
“Father knew?” I asked.
“He suspected.”
“For how long?”
“Since Patrick was a child.”
“And that is why he removed him?”
Lorenzo shook his head.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because twelve years ago, Cross returned and claimed Patrick was not simply his son.”
The cold seemed to enter my lungs.
“What else could he be?”
Lorenzo’s voice dropped.
“The legal heir to something Vittorio Vale spent his entire life pretending did not exist.”
Patrick’s face went pale.
I stepped down into the snow.
“What exactly did our father steal?”
Lorenzo looked toward the envelope on the step.
“I do not know.”
“That is not good enough.”
May you like
“It is the truth.”
A light came on in the townhouse across the street.
