Chapter 3 – THE POLAROID IN THE POCKET

The air in the cramped apartment suddenly felt suffocating.

Luca stared at the handwriting on the Polaroid, the gun dropping slightly in his hand.

The boy in the blue blanket is not your brother.

“I don’t understand,” Luca whispered, his voice cracking. “If Matteo isn’t my brother… then who is he?”

Marco stepped forward, shining his flashlight over the rest of the table.

“Boss,” Marco said grimly, pointing to a small, folded piece of paper sticking out from beneath the recipe book.

Luca pulled the paper free and unfolded it. It was a receipt from a local pharmacy, dated yesterday. But on the back, written in the same rusty ink, was a message.

If you want to know who the boy is, Luca, ask the woman standing behind you. Ask Hannah.

My heart stopped completely. The blood roared in my ears.

Luca turned around slowly, the gun lowering completely, but his dark eyes were piercing, filled with a terrifying, absolute confusion.

“Hannah?” Luca asked, stepping toward me. “What does this mean? How do you know Lorenzo Rossi?”

“I don’t!” I gasped, backing away until my shoulders hit the peeling wallpaper of the apartment. “I swear to God, Mr. Moretti, I have never met him! I don’t know anything about a baby!”

“Then why is your name on this note?” Luca demanded, holding the paper up.

“I don’t know!” I cried, tears of pure panic springing to my eyes. “I’m just a maid! I grew up in foster care! I don’t have a family!”

Luca froze.

The anger in his eyes vanished, replaced by a sudden, jarring realization.

“Foster care?” Luca repeated softly.

He looked down at the Polaroid again. He looked at the baby wrapped in the blue blanket.

Then, very slowly, Luca looked back up at me.

He stepped closer, reaching out with a trembling hand, and gently brushed my hair back from my face, his eyes frantically scanning my features.

“You have her eyes,” Luca whispered, the sheer impossibility of the moment breaking his voice. “You have my mother’s eyes.”

I stared at him, my mind unable to process the terrifying conclusion he was drawing.

“No,” I breathed, shaking my head violently. “No, that’s impossible. My mother was a drug addict who abandoned me at a hospital when I was a baby. The state raised me.”

“Did they give you a birth certificate?” Luca asked urgently.

“No! Just a file with my first name!”

Luca looked at the recipe book, then at the birth certificate he had found in the silver evening bag earlier that morning.

Matteo Moretti.

“My mother was trying to hide a child from the mafia,” Luca deduced, the pieces finally clicking together with devastating clarity. “If she had a boy, they would have hunted him down as a threat to the bloodline. But if she had a girl…”

He looked at me, a profound, tragic sorrow washing over his face.

“She faked the birth certificate to say she had a boy named Matteo,” Luca explained, his voice thick with emotion. “To throw the other families off the scent. But she actually had a daughter. And she gave her away to protect her.”

I collapsed against the wall, sliding down to the dirty floor, burying my face in my hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

Everything I knew about my life, my miserable, lonely childhood, had been a lie. I wasn’t abandoned because I was unloved. I was abandoned because I was the daughter of a mafia queen and her greatest enemy.

“Hannah,” Luca said softly, dropping to his knees in the dirt beside me.

He didn’t look at me like a boss looking at a maid. He looked at me like a man who had just found the only piece of his mother he had left in the world.

He reached out and gently pulled me into his arms, holding me tightly as I wept against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Luca whispered fiercely, burying his face in my hair. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this alone. But you are not alone anymore. You’re my sister.”

I clung to him, the terrified, lonely foster kid finally finding an anchor in the most impossible place.

But the quiet, emotional reunion was shattered by the sound of heavy boots echoing up the wooden stairs outside the apartment.

“Boss!” Marco yelled, raising his weapon and moving to block the door.

The door burst open.

Three heavily armed men poured into the room, assault rifles raised.

They weren’t wearing the suits of the Moretti syndicate. They wore the colors of the Bellini family. Vanessa’s family.

“Drop the gun, Luca!” the lead gunman shouted, aiming his rifle directly at us.

Luca didn’t hesitate. He shoved me behind him, raising his own weapon, his body completely shielding mine.

“How did you find us?” Luca demanded, ignoring the order to drop his weapon.

“Vanessa sends her regards,” the gunman sneered. “She said you’d probably come looking for the old coat. She paid us very well to make sure you didn’t leave this apartment.”

Vanessa. She had orchestrated this ambush before Marco had even dragged her out of the house.

“Kill them both,” the gunman ordered.

I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the deafening roar of gunfire.

But before a single shot could be fired, a massive explosion rocked the building.

The window of the apartment shattered inward, showering us in glass as a heavy, concussive boom echoed from the street below.

The gunmen stumbled, distracted by the blast.

Luca and Marco didn’t wait. They opened fire simultaneously, dropping two of the gunmen instantly.

The third gunman turned to run, but a figure stepped out from the shadows of the hallway and shot him point-blank in the chest.

The gunman fell to the floor, dead.

Standing in the doorway, holding a smoking revolver, was an older man with graying hair and a sharp, familiar jawline.

He wore a dark, weather-beaten trench coat.

He looked at Luca, then his eyes locked onto me, huddling on the floor behind his son.

“Hello, Hannah,” Lorenzo Rossi said softly.

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