Chapter 2 - The Daughter He Never Knew
Four years earlier, Isabelle Vescari had been the only soft thing in Damian’s life.
He had met her at a hospital fundraiser in River North.
She had been arranging flowers.
He had been attending because men with expensive suits had told him respectable businessmen attended charity dinners.
She had looked directly into his eyes.
That alone had interested him.
“You know who I am?” he had asked.
“Yes.”
“And you’re not afraid?”
She had smiled.
“Fear seems like a bad reason not to look at somebody.”
They married eleven months later.
For two years, Greystone changed.
There were flowers in rooms that had once smelled only of polished wood and cigar smoke.
There were paintings on the walls.
There was music at breakfast.
There was laughter.
Then Victor Hale walked into Damian’s study carrying a leather folder.
Victor had been his father’s closest adviser.
He had known Damian since childhood.
He had attended birthdays, funerals and hospital rooms.
The folder contained bank records showing millions transferred into accounts under Isabelle’s maiden name.
It contained photographs of her meeting men linked to the Vescari family’s enemies.
It contained signatures.
Dates.
Numbers.
Enough evidence to destroy a marriage.
Isabelle denied everything.
“Someone made this,” she had whispered.
Damian had been too angry to hear her.
“Get out.”
“Damian, please.”
“Get out of my house.”
She had stood in the library doorway, trembling.
“I love you.”
He had turned away.
Six months later, her car was found in the Chicago River.
No body was recovered.
Damian still held a private funeral.
Then he locked her sitting room and buried the man he had once been with her.
Now a three-year-old housekeeper’s daughter had Isabelle’s eyes and his family’s white streak.
That night Damian summoned Enzo.
“I want everything on Elena Parker.”
Enzo nodded.
“Everything?”
“Every address. Every job. Every medical record you can legally obtain. Every name she used before coming here. And the child’s birth certificate.”
“Victor?”
“No.”
Enzo’s expression changed.
Victor Hale was usually the first person Damian trusted with private investigations.
“Not Victor,” Damian repeated. “Not anyone.”
Two days later, Enzo returned.
Elena Parker had once been a nurse at a small private clinic west of Chicago.
She had quit without notice three years earlier.
One former patient record appeared shortly before she disappeared.
Isabelle Vescari.
Enzo placed a grainy old security photograph on Damian’s desk.
Elena stood outside an examination room.
Beside her was Isabelle.
Pregnant.
Damian sat down.
He stared at the photograph until the edges blurred.
“She was pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“Approximately four months.”
Damian looked toward the closed study door.
He could almost hear Lily’s little shoes in the hallway.
“Birth certificate?”
Lily Parker. Born three years ago in Indiana. Elena listed as the mother. Father blank.”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“Bring Elena to the library tonight.”
At ten fifteen, Elena entered.
Damian placed the photograph on the table.
She looked at it.
Then closed her eyes.
“How long were you going to wait?” he asked.
Elena’s hands trembled.
“I needed to know you were safe.”
“Safe?”
“For Lily.”
Damian stood.
“Tell me who she is.”
Elena’s breath broke.
“She isn’t my biological daughter.”
Silence.
Damian did not move.
Elena looked at him.
“She’s yours.”
His fingers tightened around the back of a chair.
“And Isabelle’s.”
A drinking glass slipped from Damian’s other hand and struck the rug.
Neither of them noticed.
Elena sank into a chair.
She told him everything.
She and Isabelle had been friends in college.
After Damian expelled Isabelle from Greystone, she had arrived at Elena’s clinic soaking wet and terrified.
She was pregnant.
She believed someone inside Damian’s organization had framed her.
More importantly, she believed that person would kill the baby if he discovered the pregnancy.
Isabelle gave birth in secret.
She named the little girl Lily because Damian had brought white lilies on their first date.
One month later, Isabelle left to meet someone who claimed he could prove who had framed her.
Before leaving, she made Elena promise something.
“If I don’t come back, take Lily and run.”
Isabelle never returned.
Elena fled Chicago with the baby.
She lived in cheap rentals and motels across Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
She changed last names.
She worked wherever she could.
When Lily’s white streak appeared during infancy, Elena began hiding it beneath headbands.
“Why come back?” Damian asked.
“Because ten months ago I learned you had reopened the investigation into Isabelle’s disappearance.”
Elena looked him directly in the eye.
“I thought maybe you finally doubted the story you were given.”
Damian stared into the dying fire.
“I doubted it every night.”
May you like
“But not enough.”
The words hurt because they were true.
