Chapter 10 - THE FARMHOUSE CELLAR
Police arrived first.
Gabriel hated that.
Norah insisted.
Good.
Eleanor had hidden with the twins inside an old storm cellar beneath the pantry.
Lucia paid to build it years earlier.
Vittorio searched the house above.
He never found the entrance.
Then he heard sirens.
Tried to escape through woods.
Caught.
Alive.
No execution.
No Costa revenge.
Handcuffs.
For the first time in decades, Vittorio looked ordinary.
Old.
Wet.
Furious.
He saw Gabriel standing behind federal agents.
“You called police on family?”
Gabriel answered:
“You stopped being family when children became assets.”
Vittorio laughed.
“You think you’re different?”
Gabriel said nothing.
Because the honest answer was complicated.
Then Norah emerged carrying Lucia.
Eleanor carried Luca.
Vittorio stared at the babies.
Calculation returned.
Even now.
Norah saw it.
“So that’s all they ever were to you.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
Her face changed.
That phrase.
Every abuser loves it.
Then she walked past him.
No speech.
No satisfaction.
Inside the farmhouse, Gabriel sat beside the bassinets but still did not pick them up.
Norah noticed.
“You can.”
He looked at her.
“Are you sure?”
That question mattered.
“Yes.”
Gabriel lifted his son first.
Tiny.
Warm.
Luca Daniel opened his mouth and screamed directly into his father’s face.
Norah almost smiled.
“Good lungs.”
Then Lucia Eleanor started crying too.
Gabriel held both awkwardly.
Terrified.
It was the first time Norah saw the most feared man in Chicago genuinely afraid of doing something wrong.
Then Eleanor entered.
“They found something in Vittorio’s car.”
A legal envelope.
Inside:
Original birth certificate for Mateo.
Not forged.
The real one.
Father:
Gabriel Costa.
Mother:
Elena Cruz.
And a handwritten note from Lucia Costa.
If Mateo is ever found, do not take him from the family who raised him. Blood has already taken enough.
Gabriel read it twice.
His mother was still correcting him from the grave.
Then another document.
DNA test.
Conducted years earlier.
Mateo definitely Gabriel’s son.
But attached was a second paternity result.
For one of Norah’s newborns.
Baby Boy Costa.
Luca Daniel.
Probability of Gabriel paternity:
0%.
The room went silent.
Norah stared.
“That’s impossible.”
Gabriel looked at her.
She had never been unfaithful.
He knew that before she spoke.
Then Eleanor whispered:
“Vittorio falsified this.”
Probably.
But why?
To split them?
To challenge trust rights?
Then they checked the laboratory.
The test was real.
The sample wasn’t Luca’s.
It belonged to another newborn boy born the same night.
Someone had prepared a substitute sample before the twins were even delivered.
Meaning Vittorio had expected access to the birth from the beginning.
And the unknown baby’s sample matched one Costa relative.
Not Gabriel.
May you like
Vittorio.
Vittorio had a newborn son somewhere.
