Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN WATCHING ME FOR FOURTEEN MONTHS
I did not sleep that night.
Neither did Damian.
The triplets did.
All three of them.
In the same room.
With me.
That part was not planned.
Damian had taken us to a guarded townhouse on the North Side rather than his main estate because, according to him, fewer people knew it existed.
I refused the guest suite until Mia screamed when I tried to leave.
Then Noah woke.
Then Nicholas.
For twenty minutes, the feared Marchetti household discovered that three toddlers were more powerful than armed guards.
Eventually, I lay in the middle of an enormous bed while three little bodies curled around me.
Mia tucked her face against my shoulder.
Noah’s hand rested in my hair.
Nicholas fell asleep holding two of my fingers.
I cried quietly until I had nothing left.
At six in the morning, Damian stood in the doorway.
He had removed his jacket.
His white shirt was rolled at the sleeves.
For once, he looked less like a mafia boss and more like a man who had not slept because his entire understanding of his family had broken.
“They do this with you?”
I whispered.
“Do what?”
“Sleep together.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His expression tightened.
“When I first brought them home, they screamed if we separated them.”
My chest hurt.
“What happened to them?”
“I’m trying to find out.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“What happened before you got them?”
He glanced toward the children.
“The woman calling herself Rachel said they had been moved repeatedly because Luca had enemies.”
“And you believed her?”
“I believed DNA tests proving they were my brother’s children.”
I sat up carefully.
“You tested them?”
“Yes.”
“Then test me.”
He went still.
“I already arranged it.”
“Without asking?”
His eyes met mine.
Then he sighed.
“Fair.”
I almost smiled despite everything.
“I want it done.”
“Today.”
The DNA technician came at eight.
Cheek swabs.
Me.
All three children.
Results expedited.
Damian paid.
I did not argue about that.
Some things did not need principles.
While we waited, his investigators reconstructed my pregnancy.
Luke Martin entered my life eighteen months before the babies were born.
He claimed to work as a project consultant.
He rented a modest apartment.
Drove a ten-year-old Jeep.
Paid in cash too often.
I thought he was private.
Now I knew he had been Luca Marchetti pretending to be ordinary.
“Why?” I asked.
Damian sat across from me in the townhouse library.
“Why what?”
“Why would your brother pretend to be poor?”
“He wasn’t pretending to be poor.”
“His apartment had a broken dishwasher.”
“That may have been authentic incompetence.”
I looked at him.
Damian almost smiled.
Then his expression softened.
“Luca hated our name.”
That surprised me.
“He was born into the same family you were.”
“He wanted out.”
“Did you let him?”
“No.”
The honesty was immediate.
I studied him.
“Why?”
“Our father had just died. Operations were unstable. Luca knew too much.”
“So you trapped him.”
“Yes.”
No excuses.
That made it harder to hate him casually.
“He created Luke Martin to have parts of a life I couldn’t monitor.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
My throat tightened.
“Did he tell you about me?”
“Not by name.”
“What did he say?”
Damian looked away.
“He said he had met someone.”
“And?”
“He said she made pancakes that could qualify as assault.”
I started crying and laughing at the same time.
Luke hated my pancakes.
He ate them anyway.
“He said she was studying early childhood education?”
“I was.”
“Before you left school.”
“My mom got sick.”
Damian nodded.
“He knew.”
Of course he did.
“He told me he wanted to leave Chicago.”
My eyes lifted.
“What?”
“Five months before he died.”
The timeline hit.
I was pregnant then.
“Did he say why?”
“No.”
Damian paused.
“But he said, ‘I’m not raising my kids like us.’”
Everything inside me stopped.
“He knew.”
“Yes.”
“He knew about the triplets.”
“Yes.”
I covered my face.
Then why disappear?
Why leave me alone?
Damian seemed to read the question.
“Luca disappeared from my radar three weeks before you say he stopped calling.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t living normally.”
“Where was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your own brother?”
“He knew how to avoid my people.”
Then Luca resurfaced eleven months later.
Dead.
His car exploded on an access road outside Gary, Indiana.
The body was identified through dental records.
His attorney delivered guardianship documents three weeks after that.
“And Rachel?”
“Appeared with the children two months later.”
“Why not immediately?”
“She claimed she feared me.”
“Did she?”
Damian’s eyes became cold.
“She feared something.”
Before he could continue, one of his investigators entered.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We found Rachel Martin.”
I stood.
“Where?”
“Not alive.”
The room went silent.
Damian’s expression changed.
“How?”
“Body recovered eight months ago in Lake Michigan.”
I stared.
“What?”
“She was identified as Rachel Dunn. Thirty-two. Nurse.”
“Nurse?”
The investigator nodded.
“She worked at St. Vincent Women’s Center.”
My blood turned cold.
“What department?”
He looked at me.
“Labor and delivery.”
I stopped breathing.
Rachel Martin—the woman who claimed to be the triplets’ mother—had been one of the nurses at the hospital where I gave birth.
“What did she look like?”
The investigator handed me a photograph.
I knew her.
Immediately.
Blonde hair.
Round face.
Blue eyes.
She had sat beside my hospital bed after delivery.
Held my hand.
Told me my babies were gone.
I dropped the photograph.
“That’s her.”
Damian stood.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
My voice shook violently.
“She told me they died.”
The investigator continued.
“Her financial records show deposits totaling $480,000 beginning one week after the births.”
“From who?” Damian asked.
“Shell companies.”
“Trace them.”
“We are.”
I stared at Rachel’s photograph.
The woman who watched me mourn.
Who told me there was no point asking to see the bodies because “they were too fragile.”
I had believed her because grief makes authority feel safe.
“What else?”
The investigator hesitated.
“She visited Elena’s apartment building repeatedly over the past year.”
My stomach twisted.
“The photo?”
“Possibly.”
“She watched me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
No answer.
Then the DNA results arrived.
Damian placed the envelope in front of me.
I opened it.
The words blurred immediately.
MATERNAL RELATIONSHIP: CONSISTENT.
Probability: 99.9999%.
Mia.
Noah.
Nicholas.
All three.
Mine.
My babies.
Alive.
I made a sound.
I don’t know what kind.
Damian came around the table.
Stopped two feet away.
“Can I?”
I understood.
He wanted to touch me.
Comfort me.
I nodded.
He put both hands around my shoulders before my legs gave out.
I cried against a man I had known less than twenty-four hours.
Not because I trusted him.
Because he was the only other person in the room who understood exactly which three children those papers belonged to.
“They’re mine.”
“Yes.”
“They’re mine.”
“Yes.”
I pulled away.
Anger replaced grief with terrifying speed.
“Who stole them?”
Damian’s face hardened.
“We find out.”
“Not you.”
He frowned.
“We.”
I wiped my face.
“They were stolen from my body.”
“I know.”
“Your family had them.”
“My brother’s children.”
“Still my children.”
“Yes.”
No argument.
That mattered.
Then his investigator’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
His expression changed.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We traced the first payment to Rachel Dunn.”
“From?”
The man looked uncomfortable.
“Marchetti Family Trust.”
Damian became completely still.
“That’s impossible.”
“The authorization is real.”
“Whose?”
The investigator swallowed.
“Your mother’s.”
I stared at Damian.
His mother.
Lucia Marchetti.
The elegant widow who chaired three charities and had spent years telling newspapers her sons were misunderstood businessmen.
Damian sat slowly.
For the first time since I had met him, he looked genuinely afraid.
May you like
Not of an enemy.
Of the possibility that the person who stole my children had been sitting at his family table the entire time.
