Chapter 5 - THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST
I did not sleep.
At four in the morning, Roman found me in the kitchen.
“You need rest.”
“You need fewer secrets.”
“Agreed.”
That surprised me.
I stared into cold coffee.
“My father was not having an affair with Elena Bellandi.”
“You know that?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because he adored my mother.”
Roman sat.
“People can adore someone and betray them.”
“Helpful.”
“Sorry.”
I rubbed my face.
“My father worked at a garage.”
“Which?”
“Mercer Auto.”
Roman frowned.
“What?”
“My family used that garage.”
I looked up.
“Of course.”
“My father kept classic cars.”
“So Daniel may have met Elena.”
“That’s all we know.”
“No.”
I pulled out my phone.
“My mother kept journals.”
Roman’s gaze sharpened.
“Where?”
“Storage unit.”
We went at sunrise.
Roman wanted six guards.
I allowed two.
I hated that this was becoming normal.
My storage unit smelled like dust and cardboard.
Boxes from my mother’s apartment lined the back wall.
I had avoided opening most of them.
Grief loves procrastination.
After forty minutes, I found the journals.
1999.
2000.
2001.
Iris had been born in 2004.
Nothing.
Then a box labeled:
WORK
Inside were nursing records.
Old badges.
Photographs.
And letters.
One envelope bore Elena Bellandi’s name.
Never mailed.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Elena,
I cannot keep lying for you. Dominic has begun asking questions about the hospital. Daniel says the paperwork can be corrected, but only if Victor never sees the original.
I stopped.
Roman took the letter.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
He continued reading.
The baby is innocent. Ren is innocent. Grace is innocent. None of these children should pay for what the adults did.
My name.
There.
Twenty years ago.
I sat on the floor.
Roman crouched beside me.
“Your mother involved you.”
“Why?”
Another letter.
Daniel believes the safest answer is the Mercer name because no one will look twice at it.
I stared.
“My father’s name was fake.”
Roman understood at the same moment.
“On Iris’s certificate.”
“He wasn’t her father.”
“Maybe.”
“No.”
I knew Daniel Mercer.
He would help someone hide.
He would not secretly father a child and then let my mother write calmly about protecting it.
We found more.
The truth emerged in fragments.
Elena Bellandi had given birth under another name at a private maternity clinic.
Dominic Bellandi believed the baby might not be his.
Victor had somehow learned there was uncertainty.
Elaine and Daniel Mercer helped alter early paperwork until Dominic made a decision.
Then one journal entry changed everything.
Dominic came tonight. He knows. He held Iris for an hour and said, “Whatever made her, she is mine now.”
I read it twice.
Roman looked away.
His father had known.
“He chose her.”
Roman nodded.
That should have solved the mystery.
It didn’t.
Because beneath the journal was a laboratory envelope.
Old.
Sealed.
Roman opened it.
DNA PATERNITY ANALYSIS.
Dominic Bellandi.
Iris Bellandi.
Probability of paternity:
0.00%
Iris was not Dominic’s biological daughter.
Roman and Iris might still share a mother.
Half-siblings.
But the Bellandi inheritance depended on Dominic’s bloodline.
Victor had motive.
A huge one.
Roman whispered:
“He knew.”
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“He protected her anyway.”
Roman looked at the results.
Then said something I didn’t expect.
“He changed his will after she was born.”
“How?”
“Split everything equally.”
“Against the bloodline rules?”
“Yes.”
“So someone who wanted control needed Iris declared illegitimate.”
Roman nodded.
“And maybe needed me dead too.”
The door to the storage unit slammed outside.
Roman stood instantly.
One guard shouted.
Footsteps.
Then silence.
Roman pushed me behind the boxes.
A man appeared at the entrance.
Not Victor.
Father Luca.
The priest.
His coat soaked with rain.
His hands raised.
“I came alone.”
Roman’s face hardened.
“You disappeared.”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“Because Victor knows about the letters.”
Roman went still.
“How?”
Father Luca looked at me.
“Elaine Mercer told me before she died.”
My chest tightened.
“You knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She was trying to keep you outside this.”
“That worked beautifully.”
He looked ashamed.
Roman held up the DNA report.
“Who is Iris’s father?”
Father Luca closed his eyes.
“That is the wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?”
“Who does Victor think her father was?”
Roman’s patience vanished.
“Luca.”
The priest looked at both of us.
“He thinks Iris’s biological father was the only man Dominic Bellandi ever truly feared.”
“Who?”
May you like
Father Luca whispered:
“Victor himself.”
