Chapter 3 - THE DAUGHTER WHO WASN'T SUPPOSED TO COME HOME
Hannah had spent twelve years learning how to live without her mother.
Patricia Brooks had died after what doctors called a sudden cerebral aneurysm.
There had been no warning.
One morning, Patricia had been making pancakes.
That afternoon, Hannah had been sitting beside a hospital bed while a neurologist explained there was nothing anyone could do.
Hannah had touched her mother's face after life support was removed.
She had watched a funeral director close the casket.
She had watched her father stand beside the grave.
So the woman now standing inside the DeLuca basement could not be Patricia.
But she had Patricia's eyes.
Patricia's mouth.
And the tiny crescent-shaped scar beside her right eyebrow from the time she'd fallen off a bicycle at thirteen.
Hannah backed into Luca.
He steadied her by the elbow.
“Don't touch me,” Hannah whispered.
He released her immediately.
Not because he was offended.
Because he understood she didn't know what was real anymore.
The woman took one step closer.
“Hannah.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“My mother is dead.”
Patricia's face tightened.
“I wanted you to believe that.”
“You wanted—”
Hannah laughed, and the sound came out broken.
“You wanted me to believe you were dead?”
“It kept you alive.”
“For twelve years?”
Patricia looked toward Luca's mother.
“Ask Elisabetta.”
So the old woman had a name.
Elisabetta DeLuca.
Luca turned toward her.
“You knew?”
“Not until after Patricia disappeared.”
Hannah's eyes burned.
“Everybody here disappears.”
No one answered.
“That seems to be the DeLuca family solution to everything.”
Patricia lowered her voice.
“You're right.”
That stopped Hannah.
She had expected an excuse.
Not agreement.
Patricia looked older than the mother Hannah remembered, but she carried herself with the same quiet strength.
“I failed you.”
“That's supposed to fix this?”
“No.”
“My father thinks you're dead.”
Patricia's expression changed.
“He doesn't know?”
Hannah stared at her.
“You're asking me?”
Patricia looked genuinely shaken.
“Elisabetta told me Daniel was relocated.”
“My father lives in Edison.”
Elisabetta went pale.
Patricia turned on her.
“You said he was in Arizona.”
“He was supposed to be.”
Hannah stepped between them.
“My father has lived in the same house for twenty-nine years.”
Silence.
Luca watched Elisabetta carefully.
“So someone has been feeding both of you false information.”
Rebecca nodded.
“That's what they do.”
“Who is they?”
Patricia looked at the camera.
“The Bellini Foundation.”
Luca's expression hardened.
The Bellini Foundation was publicly respectable.
Hospitals.
Scholarships.
Maternal health programs.
Private clinics across the East Coast.
Luca knew its chairman socially.
Dr. Adrian Bellini.
Sixty-eight.
Quiet.
Cultured.
Untouchable.
Rebecca said, “Their maternity clinics were the front.”
“For Vittorio's network?”
“At first.”
Elisabetta corrected her.
“For my father's network.”
Luca stared.
“Your father?”
“My father, Carlo Rinaldi, began it in 1957.”
The revelation stretched the conspiracy back another generation.
“He believed bloodlines could be managed like businesses,” Elisabetta continued. “Children were leverage. Marriages were contracts. Infertility was a market. Scandal was an opportunity.”
“And you married into another family that continued it.”
“I was married into it.”
Hannah barely listened.
Her entire world had narrowed to Patricia.
“Why was Rebecca holding me?”
Patricia looked at her.
“Because you were born in a Bellini clinic.”
“So?”
“The same night Rebecca lost a daughter.”
Luca turned sharply.
Rebecca closed her eyes.
Hannah stared at her.
“A daughter?”
Rebecca sat beside Ben.
“Before Owen and Ben.”
Luca looked as if someone had struck him.
“You told me you miscarried.”
“I was told I miscarried.”
“When?”
“Thirteen years ago.”
Hannah did the math.
She was twenty-nine.
“That doesn't make sense.”
“No,” Patricia said. “Your birth came sixteen years earlier.”
Hannah frowned.
Rebecca looked at Patricia.
“You'd better explain from the beginning.”
Patricia nodded.
“Hannah wasn't Rebecca's baby.”
A strange relief passed through Hannah, followed immediately by shame that she had felt relief at all.
“But someone wanted Luca to believe she might be.”
Luca's face darkened.
“Why?”
“Because Hannah's biological father was your father's eldest son.”
Silence.
Luca stared at Patricia.
“My father's eldest son was me.”
Elisabetta shook her head.
“No.”
Luca slowly looked at her.
She seemed to age another decade before speaking.
“Vittorio had another son.”
“Before me?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Elisabetta looked toward Patricia.
Patricia said quietly, “Michael.”
Hannah's breath caught.
Her father's name was Daniel Brooks.
Not Michael.
Luca asked, “Michael DeLuca?”
“Elisabetta's first child,” Patricia said. “Born when she was seventeen.”
Elisabetta's hands shook.
“My father took him from me.”
Luca didn't speak.
“He told me the baby died. Years later, after I married Vittorio, I learned Michael was alive. Carlo had placed him with another family.”
“Why?”
“To keep leverage over me.”
“And Michael was Hannah's father?”
Patricia nodded.
Hannah laughed again.
“No. My father is Daniel.”
“Daniel raised you.”
“He is my father.”
“Yes.”
Patricia's voice softened.
“He is.”
Hannah stepped closer.
“Then what are you saying?”
“That when I was twenty-one, before I met Daniel, I was involved with a man named Michael Russo. He disappeared before I knew I was pregnant.”
Hannah stared at her.
“You never told Dad?”
“I told him before we married. Daniel chose to raise you.”
Hannah's eyes filled.
Every childhood memory of her father rushed through her.
Teaching her to drive.
Waiting outside school when she'd broken her wrist.
Sleeping in a chair beside her during pneumonia.
Standing on the porch after her mother died, trying to learn how to cook because Hannah had forgotten how to eat.
Daniel Brooks was her father.
No blood test could take that.
“What happened to Michael?”
Patricia looked at Elisabetta.
“We thought he died.”
Elisabetta whispered, “We were wrong.”
Luca rubbed a hand over his jaw.
“If Michael was your son, that makes Hannah…”
“My niece,” Luca said.
The word landed between them.
Hannah looked at Luca.
That explained the warning.
KEEP HER AWAY FROM LUCA.
Not because of romance.
Because someone had been afraid Luca would discover who she was.
Rebecca nodded.
“When I first met Hannah's mother years later, I recognized Michael's photograph in her wallet.”
Patricia looked at her.
“She helped me get Hannah out of the Bellini records.”
“Why was Hannah in them?”
“Because Carlo's organization tracked every descendant.”
Hannah went cold.
“Tracked for what?”
No one answered quickly enough.
“What?”
Patricia finally said, “Compatibility.”
“For what?”
Elisabetta whispered, “Marrow. Organs. Blood.”
Owen moved closer to Luca.
Luca's face turned lethal.
“You bred children for medical matches?”
“My father did.”
“Don't make it sound distant.”
Luca turned toward the camera.
“If anyone upstairs can hear me, understand this. If one child in this house was harmed for any of this, I will find every person involved.”
A speaker crackled.
Celeste's voice.
“Then you'll have to start with me.”
Luca looked up.
“Where are you?”
“Upstairs.”
“Open the elevator.”
“I can't.”
“Why?”
“Because Marco is unconscious.”
Hannah's heart stopped.
“What?”
Celeste continued.
“Three men came through the north service entrance ten minutes ago.”
Luca's entire posture changed.
Professional.
Focused.
Dangerous.
“Names?”
“I don't know them.”
“You let them in?”
“I didn't.”
A gunshot sounded faintly through the speaker.
Owen flinched.
Celeste's breathing quickened.
“They're looking for the children.”
Luca glanced at Rebecca.
“Both boys?”
Celeste whispered:
“No.”
Another gunshot.
Then:
“They keep asking for Hannah.”
Hannah's blood turned cold.
Luca looked at her.
Before anyone could speak, Patricia grabbed Hannah's wrist.
“We have to move.”
“Why me?”
“Because Michael isn't dead.”
Hannah stared at her.
May you like
Patricia pulled open the hidden passage.
“And he's the man who just came into the house.”
