Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
“Tell me where my father is.”
Damien Russo's voice was quiet.
That frightened Sophie Bennett more than shouting would have.
She sat across from him in his private office, her injured wrist resting against her chest. Between them lay the faded photograph of his father holding a newborn baby.
Three months after the world had been told he was dead.
And somewhere beyond the gates of the Russo estate, Sophie's seven-year-old son was sitting in a limousine with the woman Damien had planned to marry.
“Mr. Russo,” Sophie whispered, “we have to find Oliver first.”
Damien looked at the photograph again.
“My father was buried eight years ago.”
“I know what everyone believes.”
“I stood beside his coffin.”
Sophie swallowed.
“Did you see him inside it?”
Damien opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
His father, Vittorio Russo, had supposedly died during a warehouse explosion near the Connecticut waterfront.
The remains had been identified through dental records.
The funeral director had advised against opening the casket.
Damien remembered standing in the cemetery, twenty-three years of memories burning inside him.
He had buried his father without ever seeing his face.
“Who gave you this photograph?” he demanded.
“A woman named Elena.”
Damien's expression changed.
“Elena Marino?”
Sophie nodded.
“She was a nurse at St. Catherine's Hospital. She helped me when Oliver was born.”
Damien knew the name.
Elena Marino had been his father's private nurse during the months before the explosion.
She had disappeared shortly afterward.
He had always assumed she had left Connecticut.
“Where is she?”
“I don't know. She stopped contacting me last winter.”
Damien stood abruptly.
“Marcus!”
His security chief entered.
“Find Vanessa's limousine. Quietly. No threats against the driver. Oliver is inside.”
Marcus nodded.
“We've already located the vehicle's last toll-camera sighting. It's heading toward New Haven.”
“Have the police been contacted?”
“Not yet.”
“Then do it. A child has been taken from school without his mother's permission.”
Sophie looked up sharply.
“You're calling the police?”
Damien turned toward her.
“Your son isn't a family dispute, Sophie. He's a missing child.”
For the first time since entering the office, she looked at him without fear.
Only for a moment.
Then Damien noticed something else.
The photograph showed his father holding Oliver as a newborn.
But Vittorio was wearing a watch Damien recognized.
A silver watch with a cracked black dial.
Damien had given it to him for his fiftieth birthday.
It had supposedly been destroyed in the explosion.
“There's something I need to understand,” Damien said.
He pulled a chair closer instead of returning behind his desk.
“Is Oliver my son?”
Sophie stared at him.
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that Damien knew she had anticipated the question.
“Then why is his name Russo?”
“Because that's the name on the bracelet they gave him.”
“Who gave it to him?”
“Your father.”
Damien leaned back.
Sophie wiped her cheek.
“Oliver was born seven years ago at a private medical facility outside Hartford. I was eighteen. His father wasn't involved in our lives, and I didn't have anyone to help me.”
She paused.
“Elena arranged the delivery. She told me there were people who wanted to hurt my baby because of something his father had done.”
“What father?”
Sophie looked away.
“Daniel Reeves.”
Damien recognized the name immediately.
Daniel Reeves had worked as a financial consultant for several Russo businesses.
Seven years earlier, Daniel had disappeared after an investigation into missing family funds.
Adrian had accused him of stealing.
Damien had believed the evidence.
“Daniel Reeves was Oliver's father?”
Sophie nodded.
“He died before Oliver was born. At least that's what I was told.”
Damien rubbed his jaw.
“And my father?”
“He came to the hospital after Oliver was born. He told Elena to place the bracelet on Oliver's wrist. He said the Russo name would protect him if something happened.”
“From whom?”
“He never told me.”
Damien stared at the blue fingerprint on the cake box visible through the open office doorway.
“O.R.S.,” he murmured.
“Oliver Russo. Safe.”
Sophie shook her head.
“No. That's what Elena taught Oliver to write when he was four. The letters meant Only Russo Safe.”
Damien frowned.
“My father created that code?”
“Yes.”
“But why put it on the box?”
“Because Oliver was at the estate yesterday.”
Damien went still.
“What?”
Sophie explained that Vanessa had demanded she bring Oliver to the servants' quarters during the wedding preparations.
Oliver had been forbidden from entering the main house.
But while Sophie was working, he had wandered into the kitchen.
There, he had seen Adrian speaking with Vanessa beside a large white cake box.
“Oliver came to me frightened,” Sophie whispered. “He said the box had a secret inside.”
“What secret?”
“He wouldn't tell me. He just asked for his blue finger paint.”
Damien looked toward the box.
His security staff had already moved the steel container into a secured examination room.
The fingerprint had not been random.
Oliver had marked it deliberately.
“Why didn't you tell me yesterday?” Damien asked.
Sophie looked at her bandaged wrist.
“Because Vanessa told me she'd report me for bringing my son onto the property. She said nobody would believe a maid over the woman marrying Damien Russo.”
A bitter silence settled between them.
Damien had heard Vanessa speak harshly to staff before.
He had excused it as stress.
Wedding planning.
Long hours.
Pressure.
Now he remembered how Sophie had lowered her eyes whenever Vanessa entered a room.
He wondered how many warnings he had ignored because accepting them would have complicated his comfortable life.
Marcus returned carrying a tablet.
“Boss, the school released Oliver because Vanessa showed an emergency authorization.”
Sophie shook her head.
“I never signed anything.”
“We know,” Marcus said. “The signature was copied from his therapy paperwork.”
Damien's face hardened.
Vanessa had access to those documents because Damien's charitable foundation had helped arrange Oliver's treatment.
He had approved the assistance months earlier after Sophie requested an advance.
He hadn't known her son was connected to his father.
Or perhaps someone had carefully ensured he wouldn't know.
Marcus placed the tablet on the desk.
“We've also found the limousine.”
“Where?”
“Outside a private rehabilitation center near the coast.”
Sophie stood.
“Is Oliver there?”
“The car is empty.”
Her face crumpled.
Damien caught her good arm before she fell.
Marcus continued.
“The driver says Vanessa and Oliver entered the building together. But the building's security team won't let us inside.”
“Who owns it?”
Marcus hesitated.
“That is the strange part.”
“Marcus.”
“The property belongs to the Vittorio Russo Medical Trust.”
Damien stared at him.
His father's trust had been dissolved after his death.
Or so Damien had believed.
Sophie gripped the edge of the desk.
“Mr. Russo, Elena once told me that if Oliver was ever taken, I should look for a silver watch.”
Damien glanced at the photograph.
“The watch my father is wearing?”
She nodded.
“She said whoever carried it would know how to get him home.”
Marcus looked between them.
“Boss, there is one more thing.”
He turned the tablet around.
A security photograph showed Vanessa entering the rehabilitation center with Oliver.
Beside them stood an elderly man in a dark coat.
His face was partially hidden.
But on his left wrist was a silver watch with a cracked black dial.
Damien felt the room tilt.
He enlarged the image.
The elderly man had the same heavy eyebrows.
The same broad nose.
And the same small scar above his right ear that Damien remembered from childhood.
Sophie whispered, “That's him.”
Damien stood motionless.
Then Marcus enlarged another frame.
Oliver was holding the elderly man's hand.
The old man was bending toward him.
And the child was smiling.
Damien had spent eight years grieving his father.
Eight years believing the man was gone.
Now that man appeared to be walking freely beside the woman who had kidnapped a child.
Damien reached for his coat.
“Get the car.”
Sophie stepped forward.
“I'm coming.”
He looked at her injured wrist.
“You need medical attention.”
“And my son needs his mother.”
Damien held her gaze.
Then nodded.
They were almost at the office door when Marcus spoke again.
“Boss, you need to see the final frame.”
Damien turned.
On the tablet, the elderly man was looking directly into the security camera.
His lips were moving.
The facility's outdoor microphone had captured five words.
Marcus played the recording.
The familiar voice, older and rougher, filled the room.
“Damien, don't trust your brother.”
Damien felt every muscle in his body tighten.
May you like
He had no brother.
At least, that was what his father had always told him.
