Chapter 9 - THE NAME MY FATHER GAVE ME
My birth certificate said Olivia Marshall.
At least the copy in my apartment did.
Dad’s files contained another document.
An adoption decree.
Sealed.
I had been eleven months old when Michael and Sarah Marshall adopted me.
The woman I called Mom had died when I was sixteen.
Neither of them had told me.
I sat staring at the paper until the words stopped looking real.
“My biological name was Olivia Rossi.”
Dante went still.
“Rossi?”
“You know it?”
“Yes.”
He opened an old Moretti archive.
Elena Rossi had once worked as a bookkeeper for the organization.
Twenty-seven years earlier, she disappeared after discovering money being moved through police charities and construction companies.
Nobody knew whether she was alive.
Or so Dante had believed.
Dad’s files told a different story.
Elena testified secretly against several corrupt officials.
Afterward, she entered protection.
Then she became pregnant.
A threat reached her before she gave birth.
Michael Marshall was assigned through a security contractor to help move her.
He and Sarah eventually adopted her baby.
Me.
I felt hollow.
“Why?”
Dante read the next page.
Because Elena believed anyone connected to her child could be used against her.
Michael agreed to raise me under his name.
Sarah agreed too.
They became my parents in every way that mattered.
But the secret remained.
Then we found a photograph.
My biological mother.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
She looked like me.
Dante turned it over.
An address was written on the back.
Not old.
Current.
Connecticut.
I stared.
“She’s alive?”
A federal investigator checked.
The address belonged to a woman named Eleanor Ross.
Sixty-one.
Retired bookkeeper.
My stomach twisted.
The next morning, I stood outside a small blue house with white shutters.
Dante waited beside the SUV.
He didn’t come to the door until I asked him.
I knocked.
A woman opened it.
She looked at me.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Olivia.”
My throat closed.
“You know who I am.”
She started crying.
“I’ve known every day of your life.”
Anger arrived before tenderness.
“You were alive.”
“Yes.”
“You knew where I was.”
“Yes.”
“And you never came?”
Her face broke.
“I thought staying away kept you alive.”
I almost laughed.
Apparently everyone in my life had used the same excuse.
Then Elena looked at Dante.
Her expression changed.
“You found Leo.”
Dante froze.
“How do you know?”
“I helped Sofia.”
The world shifted again.
My biological mother had known Dante’s wife.
Elena opened the door wider.
“There is something both of you need to hear.”
May you like
She looked toward the street before lowering her voice.
“Sofia’s crash was not an accident.”
