Chapter 7 - THE CHILD WITH THE VIERI NAME
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Chiara stared at the certificate as though the ink might rearrange itself into something less impossible.
“That isn't true,” she whispered. “Mia is my daughter. I gave birth to her.”
“You did,” Alessandro said carefully. “But someone may have altered the records.”
The certificate named Marco Rossi as the father, but a handwritten amendment identified another man as the biological parent. The amendment had never been officially verified.
That man was Alessandro's younger brother, Matteo.
Alessandro had not seen Matteo since he was a teenager. After a bitter dispute with Vittorio, Matteo had left the family and reportedly died overseas years later. There had been no funeral, only a brief message from an attorney stating that his brother was gone.
Mia was five years old.
If the document was genuine, Matteo could have been her father.
Chiara refused to let anyone treat her daughter like a financial asset. “Whatever happened before she was born, Mia is not a bargaining chip. She's a little girl who needs her mother.”
Alessandro agreed immediately.
“No one will use her. We'll establish the truth through proper records, and she stays with you.”
Nico began searching for Matteo's old correspondence. In a locked file, he found letters sent from different countries for several years after the supposed death.
The final letter contained a photograph of a man holding a toddler whose face was partly turned away.
On the back, Matteo had written: For the daughter I may never meet.
Alessandro felt an ache of grief sharpen into anger.
His brother might have survived. His family might have hidden an entire branch of their history.
Then another record surfaced: a bank account funded shortly after each letter had been mailed.
May you like
The account was still active.
And its latest transaction had been made that very morning.
