Chapter 5 - The Son He Claimed
I lowered the gun.
Not because my father ordered me to.
Because the knife had already drawn a thin red line across Valentina’s throat.
Anthony and the surviving guards held their positions behind the furniture. My father’s men aimed down from the balcony.
One wrong movement would turn the lodge into a grave.
“Release her,” I said.
My father leaned against the railing, one hand pressed over the bullet wound in his shoulder.
“You always did act before thinking.”
“You taught me.”
“I tried to teach you patience.”
“You taught me to bury questions in closed coffins.”
For the first time, anger cracked his calm expression.
“You understand nothing about what I protected.”
“You stole my son.”
“I saved this family from a mistake.”
Valentina’s eyes found mine.
“Do not believe him.”
The knife pressed closer.
My father whispered something into her ear. She stopped moving.
“Tell me,” I said. “How can the child be yours?”
“Lower every weapon.”
I looked at Anthony.
He shook his head slightly.
My father’s men held the advantage, but not completely. He needed us alive long enough to make demands.
I placed my gun on the floor.
Anthony and the others followed.
My father smiled.
“Now we may speak as a family.”
His men descended and collected the weapons. One guard struck Anthony behind the knee, forcing him down.
Another searched me.
“Where is Matteo?” my father asked.
I looked toward the kitchen.
My brother had disappeared during the gunfire.
“I thought he worked for you.”
“Matteo works for fear. It makes him unreliable.”
My father pushed Valentina toward one of his men.
“Take them below.”
We were marched through the kitchen, down a narrow passage, and into the boathouse. Beneath a stack of old fishing equipment, a steel door opened to a concrete stairway.
Matteo had told the truth.
A hidden level existed beneath the river.
The underground chamber looked less like a family archive and more like a private hospital. There were examination rooms, storage cabinets, generators, and rows of locked filing shelves.
At the center stood an incubator.
Empty.
Valentina saw it and went pale.
“What happened here?” I asked.
My father lowered himself into a chair while a doctor cut open his shirt.
“History,” he said.
The doctor began removing the bullet.
My father did not ask for anesthetic.
“Thirty-five years ago,” he continued, “your mother learned she could not safely carry another child. After you were born, two pregnancies nearly killed her.”
I glanced at the sealed rooms.
“Matteo is younger than me.”
“Yes.”
“Then who carried him?”
“A woman named Rebecca Lane.”
Matteo’s mother.
The brother I had believed shared my parents was my half-brother.
My father watched me absorb it.
“Rebecca was a nurse. She agreed to become a surrogate. After Matteo was born, she demanded money and threatened to expose everything.”
“What did you do to her?”
“What was necessary.”
“Did you kill her?”
“I provided a new life.”
“That means yes.”
He smiled faintly.
“You always preferred simple words for complicated decisions.”
Valentina looked toward the files.
“And our baby?”
My father’s eyes settled on her.
“When you struggled to conceive, Voss recommended assisted reproduction. The embryo was created using Dominic’s genetic material.”
Relief crossed her face.
Then my father continued.
“But it was damaged during storage.”
The relief disappeared.
“Voss substituted another.”
“Yours?” I asked.
“My genetic material had been preserved from earlier treatments.”
“You expect me to believe a doctor accidentally put your child inside my wife?”
“No accident.”
Valentina’s voice trembled.
“Why?”
My father looked at me.
“Because Dominic lacks discipline. He married for emotion. He softened the business. He allowed captains to question him. I needed an heir who carried my blood and could be raised correctly.”
“He would still be my son,” I said.
“Legally, perhaps.”
“Completely.”
“You say that because you are sentimental.”
“I say it because I held him while his heart beat against mine.”
Something shifted in Valentina’s expression.
Until that moment, she had been listening as though my father’s claim might change everything between us.
I looked at her.
“No matter whose blood is inside him, he is my son.”
My father laughed.
“That weakness is why the family will not survive you.”
A loud metallic crash sounded in the corridor.
The doctor paused.
My father’s men turned toward the door.
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the chamber.
Two gunshots cracked from the hallway.
Someone screamed.
Emergency lights flashed red.
Matteo appeared behind one of the guards and drove a blade into his thigh. Anthony tackled another man. Valentina dropped to the floor.
I seized the doctor’s instrument tray and swung it into the face of the man nearest me.
The room erupted.
My father tried to stand.
I grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the filing cabinets.
“Where is the evidence?” I demanded.
He smiled through the pain.
“You still believe evidence changes power.”
I hit him.
A cabinet door flew open behind us.
Files spilled across the floor.
Birth certificates.
Death records.
Photographs of infants.
Names crossed out and replaced.
Valentina crawled toward them.
“Dominic!”
She held up a folder marked with our son’s patient number.
I released my father and reached for it.
The file contained laboratory reports, embryo records, and genetic testing completed before the birth.
I scanned the results.
My father had lied.
The child was not genetically his.
The paternal profile matched mine.
But the maternal profile did not match Valentina.
She read the page over my shoulder.
“No.”
Her knees nearly gave way.
“Our son is yours,” she whispered. “But he is not mine.”
My father began laughing.
“That,” he said, “is what Voss was trying to hide.”
Valentina stared at the DNA report.
“Whose egg was used?”
The final page was missing.
Torn cleanly from the file.
My father looked toward the far door.
“Ask Claire Bennett.”
“Claire is dead,” Matteo said.
My father’s laughter stopped.
“No, she is not.”
Every head turned toward him.
“She has been alive for eleven months,” he said. “And she is the woman currently holding your son.”
My blood froze.
The clinic.
Mercer.
Teresa.
Sophia.
The baby had been moved there less than an hour ago.
I grabbed Anthony’s radio.
Only static answered.
Then a woman’s voice broke through.
Calm.
Unfamiliar.
“Dominic Moretti, your father is telling the truth about one thing.”
A baby cried in the background.
May you like
The woman continued.
“I am Claire Bennett. I have your son.”
