Chapter 10 - The Blood That Could Not Be Bought
The paternity test was Luca’s idea.
I hated that I agreed.
Not because I doubted who the father was. I knew. But every secret around us had become a weapon, and certainty was one of the few things we could still manufacture.
Dr. Ferraro arranged a noninvasive prenatal test through a private laboratory. She explained the process twice, mostly because Luca kept interrupting with questions about chain of custody.
“Do you interrogate every doctor?” I asked.
“Only the ones holding needles near people I care about.”
Dr. Ferraro looked over her glasses. “I have known you since you were fifteen. Sit down.”
He sat.
The result came two days later.
Probability of paternity: greater than 99.99 percent.
Luca read the page without moving.
I watched his eyes.
“Well?” I asked.
He looked up. “I knew.”
“Then why do you look like you just won a war?”
“Because knowing privately and holding proof are different things in my family.”
That answer said too much.
“What are you not telling me?”
He folded the paper.
“My uncle Vittorio challenged succession after my father died. He argued I had no heir and therefore no reason to consolidate control.”
I stared at him. “Your family politics involve my unborn child now?”
“They will the moment this becomes public.”
“Then it doesn’t become public.”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
I expected resistance.
“Just like that?”
“You think I want my daughter used as a flag?”
The word daughter stopped me.
“We don’t know it’s a girl.”
He glanced at the ultrasound envelope on the desk.
“You opened it.”
“You told the doctor you didn’t want to know.”
“I said I didn’t want to know during the appointment.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“You are impossible.”
“I have heard that.”
For one ridiculous second we laughed.
Then Matteo entered.
The moment disappeared.
“Bianca filed an emergency petition.”
“For what?”
“Against Mara.”
I stood. “On what grounds?”
“She alleges you manipulated Noah, stole confidential documents, and conspired with Luca to extort her family.”
I stared at him.
Luca’s face went still.
“She also claims the cemetery confrontation was staged.”
“My split lip was staged?”
“She says you struck yourself after provoking her.”
I laughed. “Of course she does.”
“There’s more.”
There was always more.
“She produced security footage from the mansion showing jewelry being found in your room.”
The planted jewelry Preston had threatened me with.
“I told you about that.”
“I know.”
“But a judge doesn’t.”
“Not yet.”
Katherine Shaw arrived before lunch with three legal pads and the expression of a woman who enjoyed having an enemy foolish enough to create paperwork.
“Bianca’s petition is weak,” she said. “But Harrison arranged a same-day hearing.”
“Of course he did,” I said.
“The danger is not the restraining order. It’s the narrative. If she paints you as unstable, greedy, and sexually involved with multiple powerful men, she can contaminate Noah’s placement hearing and any future challenge involving the trust.”
Luca’s eyes darkened. “She used Preston.”
Katherine nodded. “Her filing suggests your pregnancy may belong to him.”
I laughed again, but this time there was no humor.
“Then we use the test.”
Luca looked at me. “That makes the baby public.”
“She already is.”
He understood.
At the hearing, Bianca wore cream.
I noticed because she always wore pale colors when she wanted cameras to read her as innocent.
Reporters crowded the courthouse steps. Senator Thorne did not appear, but his staff did. Preston remained missing.
Inside, Bianca’s attorney described me as “a troubled domestic employee with a pattern of inappropriate attachments.”
My attorney waited.
Then she stood.
“Your Honor, opposing counsel has made paternity relevant. We therefore submit a laboratory report establishing Luca Moretti as the biological father with greater than 99.99 percent probability.”
The courtroom shifted.
Bianca’s face changed.
Not surprise.
Fear.
The judge read the report.
Bianca stared at my stomach as if she could see forty-eight million dollars beneath my dress.
Her attorney whispered to her.
She shook her head violently.
“No,” she said aloud.
The judge looked up. “Mrs. Thorne?”
Bianca stood.
“That child cannot be his.”
My blood went cold.
Her lawyer grabbed her arm.
She pulled away.
“It cannot be Luca Moretti’s because the trust was never supposed to activate.”
Silence.
Katherine smiled very slowly.
The judge leaned forward. “What trust?”
Bianca realized what she had done.
Too late.
From the back of the courtroom, someone started clapping.
Once.
Twice.
Slowly.
We all turned.
Preston Thorne stood in the doorway.
His suit was wrinkled. His face was bruised. One sleeve was stained with dried blood.
And he was smiling at his wife.
“Tell them, Bianca,” he said. “Tell them what your father paid you to do.”
May you like
Outside the courtroom, reporters shouted questions about the baby. Luca stopped so abruptly his security detail nearly walked into him. “No photographs of Mara,” he said. A reporter yelled, “Mr. Moretti, are you confirming an heir?” Luca turned with a look that silenced the first row. “I am confirming a child,” he said. “Not an heir. Not an asset. A child.” I watched him from three steps away. The distinction mattered. Bianca had spent the morning reducing me to a maid, Noah to a trust, and my unborn daughter to a legal trigger. Luca, for all the darkness attached to his name, was the only powerful person in the building insisting she was a person before she was useful. When we reached the car, I said, “That was almost decent.” “Almost?” “Don’t become arrogant.” “Too late.” Then his expression changed. “Mara, once this is public, people who hate me may look at you differently.” “They already do.” “I mean dangerously.” I placed a hand over my stomach. “Then we build a life where fear doesn’t make every decision.” He looked at me for a long moment. “I don’t know how.” “Neither do I.” I opened the car door. “We can learn.”
Before we left the courthouse garage, Katherine made me sign a statement preserving every threatening message Bianca had ever sent. There were more than I remembered. Some were petty, some cruel, some disguised as work instructions. Seeing three years compressed into printed pages made the pattern impossible to excuse. Luca did not read over my shoulder. “Your evidence,” he said. “Your choice.” I signed anyway. For the first time, documentation did not feel like humiliation. It felt like a door locking behind the life I had survived.
