Chapter 6 - BLOOD DOESN’T LIE—PEOPLE DO
Roman wanted to confront Victor immediately.
I said that was stupid.
He said nobody had ever called him stupid in his own storage facility.
I reminded him it was mine.
We compromised by insulting each other for six minutes.
Then Father Luca explained.
Twenty years earlier, Victor had been obsessed with Elena.
Not publicly.
Never enough to challenge Dominic.
But enough that Elena feared him.
“Did he assault her?” I asked.
Luca’s face tightened.
“No.”
Relief lasted one second.
“Elena had an affair.”
Roman went still.
“With Victor?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Luca looked miserable.
“She never told me.”
“Then why did Victor think—”
“Because she let him.”
That shocked me.
“She wanted Victor to believe Iris might be his?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To protect the actual father.”
Roman laughed bitterly.
“This family needs diagrams.”
I agreed.
The real father was someone Victor might kill if he knew.
Elena created uncertainty.
Dominic later learned the full truth.
Accepted Iris.
Changed his will.
Victor kept believing there was a chance Iris was his biological child.
“So why kill her?” I asked.
Father Luca answered:
“Because he found out she wasn’t.”
The note.
Not of the same blood.
Someone had discovered proof.
Maybe Elena’s hidden records.
If Iris was not Victor’s daughter, she became nothing but an obstacle to him.
Roman said, “We need DNA.”
Iris agreed.
Roman hesitated.
She held out her arm.
“I’m done letting dead people decide what I’m allowed to know.”
The test took two days.
Longest two days of my life.
Roman and Iris were maternal half-siblings.
Same mother.
Different fathers.
That confirmed their relationship.
Then Victor submitted nothing, obviously.
But Roman’s investigators recovered an old medical sample from a surgery Victor had undergone at a private hospital.
Legally questionable.
Useful.
Zero biological relationship between Victor and Iris.
The note’s simplest meaning was true.
Not same blood.
But still one question remained.
Why had Elena written it?
Who was the biological father?
Then my mother’s journal answered.
A name appeared in an entry I had missed.
Samuel Vale came again. Elena refused to see him. He cried outside the nursery.
Samuel Vale.
I knew that surname.
Roman did too.
Baltimore’s former district attorney.
Dead fifteen years.
Reputation immaculate.
Family famous.
His son currently a state senator.
My stomach turned.
“Elena had an affair with the district attorney?”
Roman looked furious for reasons I couldn’t fully understand.
“Samuel prosecuted my father.”
“Maybe that’s how they met.”
Father Luca nodded slowly.
“Dominic knew.”
Of course he did.
Everything became grotesquely complicated.
A crime boss raising the prosecutor’s child as his own.
A woman using one dangerous man’s obsession to hide another man’s identity.
A nurse and mechanic falsifying temporary paperwork to protect a baby.
Then Roman said:
“If Victor proves Samuel was Iris’s father, he can destroy the Vale family too.”
Politics.
Leverage.
Not just inheritance.
Iris became evidence.
Human evidence.
That night, I found her sitting outside.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
She smiled weakly.
“My whole life, everyone told me who I belonged to.”
I sat beside her.
“Father. Ren. Family. Blood.”
She looked at me.
“What if none of it matters?”
“It matters if you decide it does.”
“What do you mean?”
“DNA is information.”
I shrugged.
“It isn’t instructions.”
She stared.
“My father left when Lucy was little.”
“You said.”
“He has her DNA.”
I looked toward the house.
“Ruth has no biological connection to Lucy. She showed up every time Lucy had the flu.”
Iris nodded.
“Roman?”
“He’d burn the city down for you.”
“That’s unhealthy.”
“Deeply.”
She laughed.
Then cried.
I held her.
From the doorway, Roman watched.
He didn’t interrupt.
The next morning, Victor finally called.
Roman put it on speaker.
“Ren.”
Victor’s voice sounded warm.
That made it worse.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
Roman answered:
“You tried to kill my sister.”
A pause.
“I did no such thing.”
“Come home.”
“I am home.”
“Your father would hate what you’ve become.”
Roman almost smiled.
“You mean less obedient?”
Victor sighed.
“Iris is confused.”
“She was drugged.”
“She’s unstable.”
Iris’s face hardened.
Victor continued.
“And that woman you’re protecting—Grace Mercer?”
My blood went cold.
Roman’s expression changed.
“What about her?”
“She’s not part of this.”
“Then leave her out.”
“I would.”
Victor paused.
“If her mother had.”
Silence.
“Elaine stole something from us before she died.”
I stood.
“What?”
Victor heard me.
“Grace.”
His voice softened.
“I wondered when you’d start asking.”
“What did she steal?”
“A blood sample.”
Roman looked at Father Luca.
Nobody understood.
Victor said:
“And if you want to know who Iris’s real father was, you’ll bring it to me.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Oh, you do.”
My throat tightened.
“Where?”
Victor laughed softly.
“Ask your daughter what Elaine gave her when she was born.”
The call ended.
I stared at my phone.
Lucy?
My mother died when Lucy was two.
She had given Lucy one thing I never let her wear.
A small silver locket.
It had been in our apartment when the bullet came through the window.
May you like
And I suddenly remembered—
I hadn’t packed it.
