Chapter 7 - THE CHILD THEY STOLE
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I couldn't hear anything after that.
Not the machines.
Not Adrian.
Not Elena.
Only my father's last sentence.
“You are not my biological son.”
I laughed.
A quiet, empty laugh.
“You expect me to believe that?”
My father closed his eyes.
“I expect you to remember.”
Adrian stepped closer.
“Vincent, listen.”
“No.”
I pushed him away.
“My father is a liar.”
“Yes.”
“You're saying I'm not a Thorne?”
Adrian looked at Chloe.
“You are.”
“How?”
“Because our mother raised you.”
I stared.
“Our mother?”
Adrian nodded.
“Your father was not our biological father.”
Silence.
The truth came out in pieces.
My mother had been married before she met the man I called Dad.
Her first husband was a Blackwood.
A rival family.
A man who controlled political connections from Milwaukee to Detroit.
When he died, my mother took her child—
me—
and married the Thorne patriarch.
He raised me as his own.
But he never forgave the fact that I carried another man's blood.
He spent decades trying to make me prove that loyalty was stronger than biology.
Adrian was his biological son.
I was the outsider.
Yet I was the one he chose to inherit.
Because he believed I could unite two criminal empires through blood.
The old Thorne trust was not about money.
It was about families.
Thorne.
Blackwood.
Bellini.
And others.
I wasn't the heir.
I was the bridge.
My father's plan had been to use me to absorb the rival families.
Then Chloe was born.
She was the first child carrying three bloodlines.
Thorne through Adrian's mother.
Blackwood through my mother.
Bellini through Elena.
I stared at Elena.
“Bellini?”
She nodded.
“My father was Dominic Bellini.”
The room went silent.
The man I blamed for betraying us.
The man I had ordered marked for death.
He was Chloe's grandfather.
And he wasn't dead.
I looked at Adrian.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because Dominic saved us.”
I felt the ground disappear.
“The ambush?”
“Staged.”
“Your witness protection?”
“Fake.”
“Your betrayal?”
“Fake.”
Adrian looked at Elena.
“Everything was designed to make Father think we were dead.”
“And Dominic?”
“He has been protecting Chloe from the inside.”
My head spun.
All my enemies had been pieces in one larger game.
Except one.
My father.
I looked at the hospital bed.
“You wanted me to kill Dominic.”
He nodded.
“Because if Dominic died, the Bellini trust would pass to you.”
“And then?”
“You would control all three families.”
I stared at him.
“You were building an empire around me.”
“No.”
He smiled faintly.
“I was building an empire for Chloe.”
Adrian stepped forward.
“That's why they came after her.”
I looked at my niece.
A four-year-old girl who had tucked a blanket beneath my chin.
She carried a bloodline that made her more powerful than me.
More dangerous than her father.
More valuable than any empire.
Then the hospital doors exploded inward.
Armed men stormed the corridor.
My father smiled.
“They found us.”
I drew my weapon.
“Who?”
The answer came through the speakers.
A woman's voice.
Cold.
Familiar.
“Me.”
May you like
It was my mother.
Alive.
