Chapter 10 - The Blood That Shouldn't Exist
For a long time, neither of them moved.
Maya looked at Elias as though he had become a stranger.
"That can't be true."
"I don't know what to believe."
"Your father called me his daughter."
"Maybe he raised you as his own."
"Why would my mother lie to me?"
Elias had no answer.
The medical file contained a second document: an adoption authorization signed by a nurse named Clara Bennett. The biological father's name was blank. The adopting parents were listed as Elena and Thomas Hart.
A handwritten note had been added in the margin.
The baby must never be returned to the Conti family. Isabella's death was not an accident.
Maya sat down heavily.
"My mother knew."
"She knew something."
"She spent her whole life protecting me from you."
Elias flinched.
"From my family," he corrected quietly. "Maybe not from me."
Before Maya could respond, the estate's security alarm sounded.
Marco rushed into the study.
"Someone breached the east gate."
Elias drew his weapon.
"How many?"
"Three vehicles. They're using police frequencies."
The lights went out.
A gunshot cracked somewhere downstairs.
Elias grabbed Maya's hand and pulled her behind the desk as bullets shattered the study window.
"Stay down!"
Men shouted in the hallway. Boots pounded against the stairs.
Elias fired twice toward the doorway, then dragged Maya through a concealed passage behind the bookcase. They emerged into an old wine cellar beneath the estate.
Maya stumbled.
"Elias, who are they?"
"People who don't want us reading that file."
He pulled open a service door and guided her toward the underground garage.
A black SUV waited with its engine running.
Marco was at the wheel, blood soaking through his sleeve.
"Boss, we've got to go!"
Elias helped Maya inside.
The SUV roared out through a rear tunnel just as another explosion shook the estate.
Maya looked back through the rear window, watching flames climb the roof where she had spent the previous night trying to understand her life.
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere they can't find us."
His phone rang.
The caller ID showed an unknown number.
Elias answered.
A man's voice spoke calmly over the roar of the engine.
"Hello, son."
Elias froze.
He knew that voice.
He had heard it on the tape, in the recordings, in his father's old messages.
Antonio Conti.
"You're alive," Elias whispered.
A quiet laugh came through the phone.
"Of course I am."
"Where are you?"
"That doesn't matter. What matters is the girl sitting beside you."
Maya leaned toward the phone.
"Who are you?"
The voice fell silent.
May you like
Then Antonio said something that shattered every assumption they had left.
"Maya, your mother didn't die giving birth to you. She was murdered because she discovered what I did to your brother."
