Chapter 9 - THE RESTAURANT WAS NEVER AN ACCIDENT
I had worked at Aurelia for eleven months.
I believed I got the job because another waitress quit.
I was wrong.
Victor Bell’s son, Nicholas Bell, owned the restaurant through three shell companies.
He hired me deliberately.
Dante looked furious.
“Why keep her visible?”
Julian answered.
“To watch her.”
Not kill.
Watch.
Victor did not know whether I had the ledger.
So he kept me close enough to monitor.
Mr. Carrillo had probably been reporting my shifts.
My apartment.
Who I spoke to.
Maybe even my mother’s visits.
I felt violated.
Dante immediately shut down the restaurant.
I hated that.
“You can’t just close my workplace.”
“I can.”
“I need my job.”
He stared at me.
“You potentially own half of Rosselli Maritime.”
“I still owe rent.”
“That may be the most absurd sentence I’ve heard this year.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Good. Because apparently some of it is yours.”
I almost threw something.
Instead, Marco traced my mother’s call.
Lake house near North Conway.
New Hampshire.
We left that night.
Dante insisted on taking Leo somewhere secure first.
He left him with Lucia.
His supposedly dead sister finally stepped out of hiding.
She was fifty.
Dark hair streaked with silver.
Same eyes as Dante.
She looked at me and immediately cried.
“Lena.”
I froze.
She hugged me.
I did not hug back at first.
Then she whispered:
“I held you the night you were born.”
My arms moved before my brain.
Another stolen piece of my life.
Lucia looked at Leo.
Her expression changed.
“Elena’s boy.”
“My brother,” I said.
She nodded.
“And Dante’s son.”
Julian stiffened.
“Biologically mine.”
Lucia looked at him.
“No.”
Everyone stopped.
“What?”
She opened a sealed folder.
“Elena changed the paternal sample before implantation.”
Dante looked stunned.
Again.
“How many times can one baby have a different father?”
Nobody answered.
Lucia explained Elena feared Julian’s bloodline would make Leo another target under Francesco’s trust.
So she secretly replaced Julian’s sample with Dante’s stored fertility sample from a prior medical procedure.
The clinic ledger Judge Morelli had seen was a decoy.
We repeated the test.
Again.
Different lab.
The result destroyed the previous assumption.
Dante Rosselli:
99.999% probability of paternity.
Leo was biologically Dante’s after all.
I was still Leo’s maternal half sister through Sofia’s egg.
Dante sat with the report for a long time.
Then laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because apparently there was nothing else left.
“That child has caused more paperwork than my entire shipping division.”
Leo clapped.
I laughed too.
For one minute, nobody was being hunted.
Then Marco’s phone rang.
He listened.
His expression hardened.
“We found the lake house.”
“And Sofia?”
“Alive.”
Relief hit so hard I grabbed the wall.
“But Victor isn’t alone.”
“Who?”
Marco looked toward Lucia.
“His partner is Nicholas Bell.”
The restaurant owner.
Then he looked at me.
May you like
“And Nicholas says he’s Alina’s biological father.”
Julian went completely still.
