Chapter 4 - THE SON WHO WAS NEVER HIS
The DNA results arrived the next morning.
Vincent Moretti was not Lucas Reynolds’s biological father.
Dominic Moretti was.
There were no dramatic guesses left.
No excuses.
No uncertainty.
99.99%.
Vincent read the report once.
Then placed it carefully on the conference table.
Lucas sat in another room with a child psychologist Madison had arranged.
Sophia looked destroyed.
Dominic looked worse.
I stood near the door with Emily.
I had wanted to leave Chicago immediately.
But Emily had asked one question:
“Is Lucas okay?”
So we stayed.
Because that was who my daughter was.
Kind even when adults were terrible.
Vincent looked at Dominic.
“How long did you know?”
“I didn’t.”
“You slept with her.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Dominic swallowed.
“Two weeks before she told you she was pregnant.”
Sophia whispered:
“We were fighting.”
Vincent laughed once.
It was empty.
“We were having an affair behind my wife’s back and you were cheating on me?”
The ugliness of the sentence made everyone uncomfortable.
Good.
Some truths should.
Sophia wiped her face.
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“That you would go back to Claire.”
My chest tightened.
Vincent looked at me.
I looked away.
Sophia continued.
“When I got pregnant, I knew the baby could be Dominic’s.”
“So you lied.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You told me you were certain.”
“My mother said the dates were closer to you.”
Dominic shook his head.
“You let me spend seven years believing my cousin was raising my son?”
Sophia turned on him.
“You disappeared for four years!”
“I was in prison!”
That silenced the room.
Dominic had served time for an assault connected to the Moretti organization.
Vincent looked toward my parents.
“How much did you know?”
My father rubbed a hand over his face.
“Sophia told us there was uncertainty.”
Before Lucas was born.
Before I gave birth.
Before Vincent walked out of my hospital room.
I felt physically ill.
“You knew,” I whispered.
My mother looked at me.
“Claire…”
“You knew Lucas might not be Vincent’s.”
“Yes.”
“And you still told me Sophia was giving him his first son.”
She began crying.
“I believed it was better for the family.”
“What family?”
My voice cracked.
“Because it certainly wasn’t mine.”
Emily touched my hand.
I steadied myself.
Vincent looked like a man watching the foundation of his life collapse.
Then he turned toward Sophia.
“Why didn’t you tell me after Lucas was born?”
“Because you loved him.”
His face changed.
“I still love him.”
Sophia looked stunned.
Vincent continued.
“He is seven years old. None of this is his fault.”
Dominic lowered his gaze.
Vincent’s voice hardened.
“But you used him to control me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You stayed because of him.”
“I stayed because I was ashamed.”
The room fell silent.
Sophia stared at him.
“What?”
Vincent looked at me.
“I knew three weeks after Claire left that I had made the worst mistake of my life.”
My breath caught.
Sophia shook her head.
“No.”
Vincent ignored her.
“But I had a newborn boy I believed was mine. I had destroyed my marriage. Claire was gone.”
He swallowed.
“And I convinced myself that living with the consequences was the same thing as taking responsibility.”
I looked at him.
“It wasn’t.”
“I know.”
There was no defense in his voice.
Only truth.
Dominic sat down.
“What happens with Lucas?”
Vincent immediately answered.
“He does not lose me.”
Sophia stared.
“You still want him?”
“He is not an object to want.”
His voice sharpened.
“I have been his father since his first breath.”
Dominic looked at him.
“And me?”
Vincent studied his cousin.
“That will be Lucas’s choice when he is old enough to understand.”
For the first time that morning, I saw the man I had once loved.
Not the mafia boss.
Not the husband who abandoned me.
A father.
Too late for Emily.
But maybe not forever.
My phone vibrated.
Madison had sent a message.
We have a bigger problem. Call me privately.
I stepped into the hallway.
“What?”
Her voice was tense.
“I investigated who submitted the forged custody document.”
“My father.”
“No.”
I frowned.
“He notarized it.”
“Yes. But he didn’t file it.”
“Who did?”
Madison paused.
“Someone from Moretti Legal.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
“Anthony Moretti.”
Vincent’s uncle.
The man who had controlled the family’s legal affairs for twenty-five years.
“Why would Anthony care?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
Then Madison said:
“Claire, the same day your paternity file was changed, someone created a trust in Emily’s name.”
I froze.
“How much?”
“Currently?”
“Yes.”
“Eighty-six million dollars.”
May you like
I gripped the phone.
“And Vincent never knew it existed.”
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