Chapter 6 - THE BLOODLINE
The walls of the vault felt like they were shrinking, pressing in on me until there was no air left in the room.
"That's a lie." The words tore out of my throat, harsh and desperate. "My father was David Dawson. He was a high school history teacher. He died of leukemia when I was ten."
Harold Bennett looked at me with deep, sorrowful eyes. "David Dawson was a good man. He loved your mother, and he loved you as his own. But he couldn't have children, Claire."
I looked at Alessandro. He was staring at me, his face completely unreadable.
If this was true, the man I had been working for—the man who made my heart race every time he looked at me, the man who had protected me tonight—was my half-brother.
A wave of profound, suffocating grief washed over me. Not just for the lie I had lived, but for the sudden, impossible barrier that had just slammed down between Alessandro and me.
"Are you telling me," Alessandro said, his voice dangerously low, "that this woman, who has been scrubbing my floors for eight months, is my sister?"
"Half-sister," Harold corrected softly. "Giovanni had an affair with her mother before your mother passed away. It was a brief indiscretion, but it resulted in Claire."
Alessandro picked up the heavy gold signet ring from the table. He turned it over in his large fingers, the metal catching the harsh overhead lights.
Then, he did something I didn't expect.
He laughed. It was a dark, humorless sound that echoed off the concrete walls.
"You're a brilliant storyteller, Harold," Alessandro said, tossing the ring back onto the table. "Truly."
Harold frowned. "Sir, I have the DNA records in the box—"
"I don't care what papers you forged," Alessandro interrupted, taking a step toward the older man. "You made one critical mistake."
Alessandro reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. He swiped across the screen and held it up for Harold to see.
It was a medical document.
"When Leo was born, he needed a bone marrow transplant," Alessandro said coldly. "I was tested as a donor. We ran full genetic panels on the entire Romano bloodline to find a match. Do you know what we found out?"
Harold swallowed hard, taking a step back.
"Giovanni Romano was sterile," Alessandro said, his voice ringing with absolute authority. "He had a severe childhood bout of mumps that left him incapable of fathering children. My mother used an anonymous sperm donor to conceive me."
My jaw dropped.
Alessandro turned to me. "He's not my biological father, Claire. And he sure as hell isn't yours."
Harold's face crumpled. He looked desperately toward the door of the vault.
Before he could run, Alessandro grabbed him by the collar of his cardigan and slammed him against the wall.
"Who put you up to this?" Alessandro roared, pinning the old man. "Who told you to spin this lie to push Claire away from me?"
Harold squeezed his eyes shut. "They have my daughter, Alessandro. They took her."
"Who did?"
"Marco," Harold sobbed. "Your cousin Marco."
Alessandro froze, his grip loosening slightly. "Marco was exiled to Italy ten years ago."
"He came back," Harold wept. "He came back for the art. For the money. He's working with Camille."
It all clicked into place.
"Camille didn't have the connections to pull off an art heist," I realized aloud. "Marco did. Camille was the inside man, Marcus was the muscle, and Marco was the mastermind."
"And they knew you were getting close to Claire," Harold confessed, sliding down the wall as Alessandro let him go. "Marco saw how you looked at her. He knew Claire was smart. She noticed the fake frame. He wanted me to invent a lie so sickening that you would never look at her romantically again. To isolate you."
Alessandro looked at me. For the first time all night, his guard dropped completely. The raw relief in his eyes matched my own. We weren't related. The magnetic pull I felt toward him wasn't a sin; it was real.
"Where is Marco?" Alessandro demanded, turning back to Harold.
"He's at the gala," Harold whispered. "He never left the building. He's upstairs."
My blood turned to ice. "Leo is upstairs."
Alessandro and I didn't say another word. We bolted for the door.
We sprinted up the stairs from the sub-basement, bursting through the kitchen doors and into the grand hallway. The charity gala was still happening in the ballroom, the jazz music drifting through the corridors.
We ran to the grand staircase, taking the steps two at a time.
When we reached the guest wing, the door to the nursery was wide open.
The two armed guards Alessandro had stationed outside were lying unconscious on the floor.
Alessandro drew his weapon from his shoulder holster and stepped into the room.
I followed right behind him.
The bed was empty. The cashmere blanket was tossed on the floor.
Leo was gone. Again.
But sitting on the edge of the mattress, calmly smoking a cigarette, was a man in a sharp tailored suit. He had the classic Romano features—dark hair, sharp jawline, ruthless eyes.
"Hello, cousin," Marco smiled, exhaling a plume of smoke. "I took the liberty of packing the boy's things. He's on his way to a private airstrip."
Alessandro raised his gun, pointing it directly at Marco's chest. "Tell your men to turn the car around, Marco. Or you die right here."
Marco chuckled, dropping his cigarette onto the pristine carpet and crushing it with his leather shoe.
"If I don't check in every five minutes, my men have orders to put a bullet in the boy," Marco said smoothly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, ornate silver box.
He tossed it onto the bed.
"But I didn't come to take your nephew, Sandro. I came to make a trade."
"I don't negotiate with dead men," Alessandro snarled.
"You'll negotiate for this," Marco said.
I walked over to the bed and opened the silver box.
Inside was a rosary. It was made of cheap wooden beads, worn smooth by years of use. Attached to it was a small brass key.
Alessandro's breath hitched when he saw it.
"Where did you get that?" Alessandro asked, his voice trembling for the first time.
"That's the key to the safety deposit box your mother opened the day before she died," Marco smiled. "The box containing the real evidence of who ordered the hit on her car. It wasn't the Morettis, Sandro."
May you like
Marco leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with malice.
"It was Giovanni. Your father killed your mother."
