Chapter 5 - THE MARRIAGE MATTEO NEVER KNEW ABOUT
Matteo ended the call and looked at me.
The silence between us changed.
“Were you married?”
“Yes.”
His face became unreadable.
“How long?”
“Seven months.”
“To who?”
“A man named Adrian Cole.”
Matteo stared.
I had never hidden my life before him deliberately.
But there are things you stop explaining after enough people weaponize them.
Adrian had been one of those things.
“I was twenty-two,” I said. “He was twenty-seven. We got married fast.”
“And?”
“And he became controlling faster.”
Matteo laughed once.
The irony was obvious.
I didn’t let him avoid it.
“Yes. Apparently I had a type.”
He looked away.
“What happened?”
“I left.”
“Divorce?”
“Annulment.”
“Why?”
“Because Adrian had lied about almost everything.”
Matteo’s gaze sharpened.
“What does this have to do with Luca?”
“I don’t know.”
His phone rang again.
Luca.
Matteo put it on speaker.
“Finish what you started.”
Luca sounded amused.
“Adrian Cole wasn’t his real name.”
I froze.
“What?”
“His name was Adrian Bellini.”
Matteo’s eyes snapped toward me.
Luca continued.
“My younger brother.”
For a second, the room disappeared.
Adrian.
The man who once smashed my phone because I spoke to a male coworker.
The man who monitored my bank account.
The man who told me he would ruin my life if I left.
He had been Luca Bellini’s brother.
“That’s impossible.”
“No,” Luca said. “It’s inconvenient.”
I gripped the table.
“Adrian died.”
Matteo looked at me.
“When?”
“Two years after I left him. Car accident.”
Luca laughed softly.
“No body was ever recovered.”
I stopped breathing.
Matteo’s voice became dangerous.
“Where is Adrian?”
“Alive.”
The word hit harder than I expected.
I sat down.
Luca continued.
“Adrian spent years watching you become Mrs. Matteo Rossi.”
I felt sick.
“Why would he care about my baby’s paternity?”
Luca answered:
“Because Adrian believes the child is his.”
Matteo moved so fast the chair behind him fell.
“That is impossible.”
I stood too.
“Of course it’s impossible.”
Luca laughed.
“Is it?”
Matteo looked at me.
I saw something terrible in his eyes.
Not accusation.
Fear.
The arithmetic.
Seven months pregnant.
Adrian supposedly alive.
Luca manipulating Harper.
The unauthorized test.
I stepped toward Matteo.
“If you ask me whether this baby is yours, I will walk out that door and never speak to you again.”
He held my gaze.
Seconds passed.
Then Matteo looked toward the phone.
“The baby is mine.”
No hesitation.
Luca went silent.
Matteo continued.
“And if your brother touched my wife—”
“He didn’t.”
“Then why the test?”
Luca’s tone changed.
“Because paternity was never the real question.”
He paused.
“The blood sample was.”
I touched my stomach.
“What for?”
Luca answered quietly.
“To find out whether your baby carries the Rossi mutation.”
Matteo went pale.
I stared at him.
“What mutation?”
He didn’t answer.
That told me enough.
“You knew.”
“Norah—”
“What mutation?”
May you like
Matteo finally whispered:
“The one that killed my mother.”
