Chapter 5 - THE MOTHER ON THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Dante stood so still he looked carved from stone.
“What did you say?”
Judge Morelli swallowed.
“Elena raised Leo. She delivered him. She was legally recorded as his mother.”
“But?”
“But she did not conceive him.”
I stared at Leo.
His gray eyes.
His strange attachment to me.
Dante’s voice dropped.
“Whose egg?”
Morelli looked directly at me.
My pulse exploded.
“No.”
The judge shook his head.
“Not Lena.”
Relief hit.
Then confusion.
“Then who?”
“Sofia.”
My mother.
I felt physically ill.
“That’s impossible.”
Morelli explained.
Years earlier, before my mother disappeared into a new identity, she had undergone fertility treatment.
Several eggs were frozen.
She believed the clinic destroyed them when she stopped treatment.
They did not.
Francesco Rosselli’s physician arranged for some genetic material to be stored under false records.
Twenty-two years later, one of Sofia’s frozen eggs had been used.
“Used by who?”
“Elena.”
Dante stared.
“Why?”
“Because Elena could not conceive.”
“Why use Sofia’s egg?”
“Because Sofia agreed.”
I stood.
“My mother agreed?”
“Years later. Privately.”
Nothing made sense.
“How do you know?”
“Because I witnessed the paperwork.”
Dante looked at Leo.
“So Sofia is his biological mother.”
“No.”
Morelli corrected himself.
“Genetic mother.”
Elena was his mother in every other way.
I sat down.
My mother’s genetic child.
That made Leo my half brother.
Not cousin.
My half brother.
And suddenly everything changed.
His reaching.
The locket.
The name Lena.
Maybe not instinct alone.
Maybe he had actually known my mother’s smell, voice, face.
Dante looked devastated.
“You knew?”
“Not until after Elena died.”
“How did Elena die?”
The judge looked away.
“Officially?”
“Forget officially.”
“Car accident.”
Dante’s voice turned dangerous.
“And actually?”
“Poison.”
I stared.
Another murder.
“By Julian?”
“No.”
“Francesco?”
“He was already dead.”
“Then who?”
Morelli exhaled.
“Elena was trying to tell Sofia something about Leo’s birth records.”
“What?”
“She discovered the embryo records had been altered.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed.
“Altered how?”
“The paternal sample.”
Silence.
Leo stirred against my shoulder.
I looked at Dante.
Dante looked at Leo.
“No.”
Morelli whispered:
“Dante, the clinic record does not list you as Leo’s biological father.”
Dante’s face emptied.
The judge handed him a sealed page.
Paternal donor code.
J.R.
Julian Rosselli.
My father.
I stopped breathing.
If true, Leo was not Dante’s son.
He was Julian’s.
Which meant Leo was not my half brother.
He was my full biological brother.
Same mother.
May you like
Same father.
And the baby had been reaching for the only sister he had left.
