Chapter 5 - THE CHILD ROMAN NEVER KNEW
Roman read the hospital ledger three times.
He had found it inside the wooden box beneath the child’s red coat.
Not official records.
Handwritten notes.
Dates.
Room numbers.
Initials.
Elena had kept everything.
Marco stood across the desk.
Roman’s father sat by the window.
Lucy was asleep upstairs with Mrs. Donnelly, though Roman doubted the child was truly sleeping.
One entry had been circled.
E.B. — male — 10/21 — transferred 10/22
Roman pointed at it.
“Who is E.B.?”
His father said nothing.
Roman looked up.
“You know.”
“I suspect.”
Roman waited.
“Elena Bellandi.”
Roman’s face emptied.
“That date was eight years ago.”
“Yes.”
“A year before Lucy.”
“Yes.”
Roman stood so slowly that Marco stepped back.
“My wife was pregnant?”
His father looked at him.
“You were in Sicily for almost three months that fall.”
Roman remembered.
A violent dispute between two families.
Long nights.
Elena telling him on the phone that she had been sick but was fine.
When he returned, she looked thinner.
He had believed stress explained it.
“She told me she miscarried.”
His father nodded.
“That’s what Patricia told everyone.”
Roman’s hand closed around the desk.
“Everyone?”
“Elena gave birth prematurely.”
“And my son?”
“I don’t know.”
Roman’s eyes turned black.
“You knew this for seven years?”
“No. I learned only after Elena found me.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That the baby cried.”
Roman stopped.
His father swallowed.
“She heard him cry.”
Roman looked away.
For the first time that night, composure almost left him.
His son.
A child he had mourned as a pregnancy lost too early to save.
Had lived.
Even if only briefly.
Roman walked to the window.
“What did Patricia tell Elena?”
“That medication had confused her. That the sound came from another room.”
Marco muttered a curse.
Roman turned.
“We need Patricia.”
“She’s still at the estate,” Marco said.
Roman’s gaze sharpened.
“Where?”
“Library. She refused to leave.”
“Good.”
Patricia Bellandi sat alone beside the fireplace when Roman entered.
Her pale blue evening gown was immaculate except for a small tear near the hem.
The missing fabric from Grace’s shoe.
She noticed Roman looking.
“I caught it on a chair.”
Roman placed the torn piece on the table.
Patricia did not react.
“You always were observant.”
“And you always mistook calm for ignorance.”
She lifted her wine glass.
“Where is Grace?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is my son?”
The glass stopped halfway to her lips.
There.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Roman saw it.
Patricia set the glass down.
“Who told you?”
“That was the wrong answer.”
Her expression tightened.
“Roman—”
“You should have asked what son.”
Silence.
Roman placed the hospital bracelet beside the wine.
Then the photograph.
Then the handwritten ledger.
Patricia stared at them.
“You’ve been busy.”
“My wife gave birth to a boy.”
“Yes.”
Roman felt his pulse in his throat.
“Did he live?”
“For a while.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
Roman stepped closer.
“You controlled that hospital.”
“I controlled money donated to it. Not babies.”
“You changed Lucy’s birth date.”
“I arranged it.”
“Why?”
Patricia looked tired now.
Older than seventy-four.
“Because your wife was reckless.”
Roman’s voice dropped.
“Careful.”
“Elena was going to tear apart everything your grandfather built over a technicality in a trust.”
“Stealing a child is not a technicality.”
Patricia looked toward the photograph of Claire.
“I did not steal Claire.”
“Then what do you call giving my sister to another family?”
“Saving this family.”
Roman stared.
Patricia’s voice sharpened.
“You were born into men who settled arguments with funerals. Your grandfather was powerful, but power divided becomes weakness. He wrote that absurd trust before he understood what this family required.”
“So you chose who got to be a Bellandi.”
“I made sure one heir could lead.”
Roman almost smiled.
Coldly.
“And you chose me.”
“I chose stability.”
“What happened when Claire returned?”
Patricia looked toward the fire.
“She wanted everything.”
“Or she wanted her name.”
“She had a husband. A daughter. A good life.”
“She wanted the truth.”
Patricia’s face changed slightly.
Roman noticed.
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I argued with her. I offered money. She refused.”
“And then her car burned.”
“I had nothing to do with that accident.”
Roman believed she believed what she was saying.
That made the situation worse.
“What about Elena?”
Patricia’s eyes lifted.
“I did not kill your wife.”
“I didn’t ask if you did.”
Patricia looked away.
Roman saw fear.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“Who are you afraid of?”
She stayed silent.
Roman leaned forward.
“You’ve spent decades controlling everyone in this family. Who frightens you enough that you’re protecting them now?”
Patricia whispered, “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain.”
“The boy changed everything.”
Roman stopped.
“My son?”
Patricia nodded.
“He was born with something no Bellandi should have had.”
Roman’s anger flashed.
“What?”
“A blood disorder.”
“So?”
“So neither you nor Elena carried the marker.”
Roman stared.
“You’re saying he wasn’t mine?”
“No.”
Patricia leaned forward.
“I’m saying the records proved something else.”
Roman already knew.
“My father.”
The old man entered from the doorway.
Patricia’s face drained completely.
For the first time all night, Patricia Bellandi looked genuinely terrified.
“You.”
Roman’s father closed the door.
“Yes.”
“You’re dead.”
“You arranged that too.”
Roman turned sharply.
Patricia stood.
“That was different.”
His father’s voice was quiet.
“You put a bomb beneath my car.”
Roman looked between them.
Patricia shook her head.
“I arranged for you to disappear. I did not arrange the explosion.”
Roman’s father stopped.
“What?”
“You were supposed to leave Chicago quietly.”
“My driver died.”
“I know.”
“And you let everyone believe it was me.”
Patricia’s expression cracked.
“Because when I realized someone had changed my plan, I understood I was no longer controlling the situation.”
Roman felt a new shape forming.
Someone else.
Someone who had used Patricia’s manipulation as cover.
Someone who had frightened her for twenty-five years.
Roman placed both hands on the table.
“Name him.”
Patricia stared at the silver pocket watch in her brother’s hand.
Then whispered:
“Gabriel Costello.”
Roman knew the name.
Every Bellandi knew it.
His mother’s older brother.
A man who had vanished from family business decades earlier and built his own shipping empire on the West Coast.
Roman had met him only twice as an adult.
Patricia continued.
“Gabriel learned Claire existed before I could stop him. He believed your father had stolen the Costello inheritance by marrying your mother.”
Roman’s father shook his head.
“Gabriel hated me. He wouldn’t hurt children.”
Patricia looked at him.
“You still don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
She pointed toward Roman.
“Gabriel believed Roman was his son.”
Nobody spoke.
Roman stared at Patricia.
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
She opened a drawer beside the fireplace.
From it, she removed a faded photograph.
Roman’s mother stood beside Gabriel Costello when they were young.
Nothing unusual.
Until Roman turned it over.
Written in his mother’s hand:
He can never know what happened that night.
Roman looked up.
Patricia whispered:
“Your mother didn’t give birth to twins.”
Roman’s father stepped forward.
“What are you saying?”
Patricia’s eyes filled for the first time.
“She gave birth to Claire.”
May you like
She looked directly at Roman.
“Maria Costello gave birth to you.”
