Chapter 2 - THE CHILD SHE HID
The darkness lasted three seconds.
For Dominic, it was enough.
“Clara.”
He heard the IV pole strike the floor.
A nurse cursed.
Someone screamed farther down the corridor.
Dominic moved toward the sound of Clara’s breathing and caught her before she hit the tile.
“Emergency power!” a nurse shouted.
Red lights flickered on.
Clara was against Dominic’s chest, frighteningly light beneath the hospital blanket. Her eyes were open, but unfocused.
Across the hallway, Serena was gone.
Dominic looked toward the stairwell.
“Marco.”
His security chief answered immediately through the phone.
“Find Serena. Do not hurt her.”
“Understood.”
“And lock down Union Station. Tomas stays with locker 318.”
Clara’s fingers tightened around his shirt.
“No.”
Dominic looked down.
“What?”
“Not Tomas.”
Her voice was barely air.
“Why?”
She swallowed painfully.
“Because your father knows him.”
The sentence landed just as nurses pulled Clara away.
“Mrs. Valente, you cannot be standing.”
Dominic followed the bed into recovery until Dr. Cole blocked him.
“She just survived major surgery.”
“I need five minutes.”
“She needs to survive the next five hours.”
That stopped him.
Dominic watched Clara disappear behind another set of doors.
Then he returned to his mother’s recording.
Tomas was still on the line.
“Play it.”
“Boss—”
“Play it.”
Static.
Then Elena Valente’s voice filled the phone.
“Dominic, if you are hearing this, Clara kept her promise longer than I had any right to ask.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
His mother had been dead twelve years.
Yet her voice still had the power to make him feel thirty-one again.
“Your father’s name was never the whole truth. Antonio Valente became Anthony Vale after he disappeared. He did not die in Lake Michigan. I helped him disappear because I believed it would protect you.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
The recording continued.
“I was wrong.”
A pause.
“Anthony had another family before ours.”
Dominic stared at the dark hospital window.
“Serena Bell is the daughter of Anthony’s first wife. She is not your father’s biological daughter. Anthony raised her from infancy, and in every way that mattered to her, he was her father.”
So Clara had been right.
Not his sister.
But something close enough to explain Serena’s obsession with his family.
“Twenty years ago,” Elena continued, “Clara worked evenings at St. Agnes House while attending college. One winter night, a sixteen-year-old girl arrived there pregnant and terrified.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
“Her name was Serena.”
He looked toward the stairwell.
Serena had been pregnant at sixteen.
“Anthony was searching for her. Serena believed he wanted to bring her home.”
Elena’s voice changed.
“He wanted the baby.”
Tomas said nothing on the line.
Dominic couldn’t either.
“Clara helped Serena disappear before the birth. But Serena returned to Anthony months later. She told Clara she had changed her mind.”
A longer silence.
“She had not.”
The recording crackled.
“The child had already been placed somewhere Anthony could not find her.”
Dominic’s voice came out rough.
“Whose child?”
As though answering him, Elena continued.
“The birth certificate in this locker does not contain the child’s current name. That was deliberate.”
Paper moved on Tomas’s end.
“Read it,” Dominic ordered.
Tomas hesitated.
“Mother: Serena Marie Bell.”
“And father?”
“Blank.”
Dominic felt anger rise.
Another secret.
Another half-truth.
Then Elena’s voice returned.
“Clara did not hide Serena’s daughter alone. I helped her.”
Dominic sat down.
His mother.
Clara.
Together.
Twenty years.
“What happened afterward?” Elena continued. “That is the part I pray you never have to learn. Anthony blamed Clara. Serena blamed Clara too, though for a different reason. Clara became the wall between them and that little girl.”
The recording ended abruptly.
“That’s it?” Dominic demanded.
“No. There’s another tape.”
“Play it.”
“Boss, something’s wrong.”
Dominic stood.
“What?”
“Tomas?”
A scraping noise came through the speaker.
Then Tomas whispered, “Someone opened the service gate.”
The call cut off.
Dominic called Marco.
No answer.
He called Tomas.
Nothing.
He was already moving toward the elevator when a nurse stepped out.
“Mr. Valente.”
“I have to leave.”
“Your wife is asking for you.”
Every instinct told him to go to Union Station.
Instead he turned around.
Clara lay under white blankets, a monitor counting every fragile heartbeat.
He stopped beside her bed.
“You knew Serena when she was sixteen.”
Clara’s eyes closed.
“Yes.”
“You hid her daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Her eyes opened.
“I won’t tell you.”
Dominic stared at her.
“Someone tried to kill you.”
“I know.”
“My father is alive.”
“I know.”
“You knew that too?”
“For twenty years.”
His anger finally broke through.
“Is there anything about my life you didn’t know?”
Pain crossed Clara’s face.
“Plenty.”
“Apparently not enough.”
She turned her head away.
Dominic immediately regretted the cruelty, but the words were already between them.
“You think I enjoyed this?” she whispered.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“No. You don’t.”
She looked at him again.
“I was nineteen, Dominic. Your mother came to me because Serena had nowhere else to go. Anthony had people watching shelters, clinics, bus stations. Elena said if he found that baby, he would raise her as leverage over Serena.”
“Leverage for what?”
“Loyalty.”
Dominic thought of the empire his father had supposedly left behind.
“You married me because my mother asked you to?”
Clara was silent.
That hurt more than an answer.
“Serena said you did.”
“Your mother asked me to stay close to you.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
Clara’s voice trembled.
“I married you because I loved you.”
Dominic looked at her.
“And then?”
“Then your mother made me promise that if Anthony ever returned, I would protect the girl before I protected our marriage.”
He almost laughed, but nothing was funny.
“You chose a stranger over me?”
“She wasn’t a stranger.”
Clara reached toward the bedside drawer.
Inside lay her broken pearl earring and wedding ring.
Beneath them was a faded red friendship bracelet.
Child-sized.
Clara placed it in his palm.
“I made this with her when she was seven.”
Dominic stared at the tiny bracelet.
“Who?”
“The girl.”
“You know her.”
“Yes.”
“Does Serena?”
“No.”
“Does my father?”
Clara’s face changed.
“I thought he didn’t.”
Dominic caught the wording.
“Thought?”
Clara looked toward the door.
“When Serena came to your office today, she showed me something.”
“What?”
“A photograph.”
Clara’s breathing quickened.
“Taken three days ago.”
“Of whom?”
“The girl.”
Dominic’s stomach tightened.
“She’s not a girl anymore.”
“No.”
Clara looked at the bracelet in his hand.
“She’s twenty years old.”
“Where is she?”
“I moved her this morning.”
“You moved a twenty-year-old woman?”
“She doesn’t know why. She thinks I helped arrange a temporary job outside Chicago.”
Dominic stared at his wife.
“Who is she?”
Before Clara could answer, Dominic’s phone vibrated.
A security image from Marco.
Union Station.
Locker corridor.
Tomas was on the floor.
Alive.
Beside locker 318 stood an older man in a dark wool coat.
Silver hair.
Broad shoulders.
One hand resting on a polished wooden cane.
Dominic knew that face.
Not because he had seen it recently.
Because he had spent half his childhood trying to become it.
His father.
May you like
Anthony Valente looked directly into the security camera.
And in his other hand was the child-sized red bracelet’s matching half.
