Chapter 15 - The Dead Patriarch’s House
No one believed Elias at first.
Not even Rafael.
“My father died in 2006.”
“You buried a body,” Elias said through the phone. “That is not the same thing.”
Rafael looked stunned.
Adrian’s voice hardened. “Where is he?”
“Mara will show you.”
“I’m not taking directions from Bellini.”
“You’ve spent the last twenty-four hours believing she is the monster because Varen told you she was.”
Varen, listening from his guarded room, shouted something we could not hear.
Elias continued. “Ask yourself who benefited from that story.”
Nora leaned toward the phone. “If Bellini is innocent, why kidnap people and falsify medical records?”
“She isn’t innocent.”
That answer surprised everyone.
“Mara has done terrible things. She thinks the end justifies anything. But she did not start the program, and she is not the person trying to take Lucia.”
“Who is?” I asked.
Silence.
Then Elias said, “Lorenzo.”
A dead man wanted my child.
At this point, I almost preferred ordinary organized crime.
“Prove he’s alive,” Adrian said.
A video call invitation appeared.
Adrian accepted.
The screen showed Elias in a dimly lit room.
Behind him stood Mara Bellini.
Older than I remembered, silver streaking her dark hair, no mask now.
She looked directly at me.
“Elena.”
I felt rage rise instantly.
“You watched me.”
“Yes.”
“You manipulated my pregnancy.”
“Yes.”
“You had someone inside my apartment.”
“No.”
I blinked.
“Then who took the photo?”
“Lorenzo’s people.”
“How convenient.”
“I expected you to say that.”
“Good. Then expect this: if you come near my daughter, I will spend the rest of my life destroying you.”
Mara almost smiled.
“That is exactly why Thomas Hart believed you were the one who could end this.”
My breath caught.
“You knew my grandfather?”
“Very well.”
“You worked with him?”
“For eleven years.”
“Rafael said you became obsessed.”
“I did.”
That bluntness stopped me.
“I believed the genetic discovery belonged to science more than to the people carrying it. I was wrong.”
“Then why keep going?”
“Because Lorenzo never stopped.”
Mara moved the camera.
A man appeared behind glass in another room.
Very old.
Thin.
White hair.
Oxygen tubing beneath his nose.
But the eyes were unmistakable.
I had seen them in portraits in the Moretti estate.
Lorenzo Moretti.
Adrian’s grandfather.
Alive.
Rafael made a choking sound.
“My God.”
Lorenzo turned toward the camera as if he had heard his son.
His mouth curved.
“Rafael.”
Even through a screen, his voice had authority.
Rafael went pale.
“You’re dead.”
Lorenzo smiled. “You always were sentimental.”
Adrian stood.
“You abandoned the family.”
“I preserved it.”
“You experimented on children.”
“I protected generations.”
“You tortured me.”
Lorenzo looked genuinely bored. “You survived.”
The cruelty of that answer made my blood run cold.
Adrian’s face changed in a way I recognized.
Not anger.
Something deeper.
A child finally understanding that the person who hurt him had never believed it was wrong.
Lorenzo looked at me.
“And Elena.”
“Do not say my name.”
“You look like Isabella.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should. She nearly destroyed this family.”
“Sounds like I would have liked her.”
Mara’s mouth twitched.
Lorenzo ignored it.
“Your daughter represents an eighty-year correction.”
“She represents herself.”
“For now.”
Adrian stepped closer to the screen. “Threaten her again.”
Lorenzo smiled.
“There you are.”
“What?”
“The boy I trained.”
Adrian went still.
Lorenzo continued, “You think you escaped me because you softened for a woman. You didn’t. Everything you are came from me.”
“No.”
“Your discipline. Your instincts. Your empire.”
“My empire is not yours.”
“It was built from my foundations.”
“Then watch me burn them.”
For the first time, Lorenzo’s smile faded.
Mara cut in. “Enough.”
The old man looked at her sharply.
She ignored him and turned back to us.
“Lorenzo has advanced cardiac disease. He needs an experimental marrow-derived therapy. Lucia’s cells may carry the combination his researchers need.”
My stomach turned.
“He wants to use my newborn as treatment?”
“He wants cord blood and later marrow samples.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Mine too,” Adrian said.
Mara nodded. “That is why we contacted you.”
Nora laughed bitterly. “You could have contacted us without staging kidnappings.”
“No. Lorenzo monitors every open channel.”
“Then how are you calling now?”
“Because he thinks this call is his idea.”
Lorenzo smiled faintly behind the glass.
My skin crawled.
I asked, “Where are you?”
Mara looked at me.
“Wisconsin.”
“Where?”
“An estate Lorenzo has owned under shell companies since 1998.”
Nora immediately began tracing.
Mara said, “Do not send federal agents yet.”
“Why?”
“Because there are thirty-two years of research records here, including evidence against judges, physicians, pharmaceutical executives, and members of the Moretti organization.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“You’re bargaining.”
“I’m offering you the chance to end this correctly.”
“What do you want?”
“Protection for Elias.”
Rafael whispered, “He has it.”
Elias looked toward his father.
“You don’t know me.”
“I want to.”
Pain passed across Elias’s face.
Then disappeared.
Mara continued. “And I want immunity consideration.”
Nora laughed. “You are in no position to demand immunity.”
“I have evidence that can dismantle a network spanning four countries.”
“That buys conversation, not freedom.”
“Fine.”
The call suddenly glitched.
Mara looked offscreen.
Her face changed.
“What?” Adrian asked.
She whispered, “He knows.”
The video shook.
A gunshot sounded.
Then another.
Elias grabbed the phone.
The image spun wildly.
Lorenzo’s voice shouted in the background.
Mara yelled, “Get out!”
The screen went black.
The call ended.
Nora stared at the trace on her laptop.
“I have the location.”
Adrian was already reaching for his jacket.
I looked through the NICU glass at our daughter.
Then at him.
“Go.”
He froze.
“You sure?”
“No.”
I swallowed.
“But end it.”
Adrian bent and kissed my forehead.
“This time,” I said, “come back.”
He looked at me for a long second.
“I will.”
Then he left to confront the dead man who had built his family into a prison.
Before Adrian left, he stopped beside Lucia’s incubator. For once there were no guards in the room, no doctors, no family secrets being shouted into phones. Just the three of us.
He slipped his hand through the porthole and touched the sole of her foot.
“I’m going to meet the man who taught my family that love and ownership were the same thing,” he whispered.
I stood beside him. “Then remember they aren’t.”
He looked at me.
“Come back because you choose us. Not because you think dying for us would prove something.”
His eyes tightened.
“That was very specific.”
“I know you.”
He nodded.
“No martyrdom.”
“No martyrdom.”
“And if someone starts monologuing, duck.”
May you like
That earned a real laugh.
Then he kissed Lucia’s tiny foot, kissed my forehead, and walked out carrying less certainty than the man I married and more humanity than the man I divorced.
