Chapter 1 – The Question In The Dining Room

The silence in the dining room felt heavier than the crystal chandeliers hanging above us.

Thirty-six powerful guests watched a young woman, trembling in a dark green dress, look at the housemaid standing by the wall.

“Did you want to keep me?” Rebecca asked.

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the room like a physical blow.

My breath caught in my throat. Twenty-eight years of rehearsing what I would say, of imagining this exact moment, vanished completely.

“Yes,” I whispered, tears spilling hot down my cheeks. “Yes. More than anything in the world.”

Rebecca swallowed hard, her eyes searching my face, desperately looking for the truth.

“Then why didn’t you?” she asked.

Before I could form the words, Vanessa Bellini gave a small, impatient sigh.

“Rebecca, darling, let’s not make this overly dramatic,” Vanessa said smoothly. “Catherine was a single woman with no prospects. She made the practical choice.”

Luca turned his head slowly toward his fiancée. The absolute stillness of his posture was terrifying.

“Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a low, lethal register. “If you speak again before Catherine does, I will have Marco escort you out of your own engagement dinner.”

Vanessa froze, the color draining from her face.

Luca looked at me. His dark eyes held a fierce, protective command.

“Answer your daughter, Catherine,” he said softly.

I looked back at Rebecca.

“I was twenty years old,” I told her, my voice shaking. “I had no money. No home. The friend I was staying with told me I had to leave the day I brought you back from the hospital. I sat on a bench outside the agency for three hours, holding you, trying to figure out how I could keep you warm that night.”

Rebecca’s eyes filled with tears, her grip on her purse tightening.

“I didn’t give you away because you were unwanted, Anna,” I cried, the name slipping out again. “I gave you to a family who could give you a warm bed. A safe home. Things I couldn’t.”

Rebecca stared at me. The anger that Vanessa had stoked in her began to fracture, replaced by a profound, agonizing sorrow.

“You didn’t have anywhere to go?” Rebecca whispered.

I shook my head, unable to speak through my sobs.

Rebecca took a hesitant step toward me.

But Vanessa, terrified of losing control of the spectacle she had orchestrated, stepped between us.

“Oh, please,” Vanessa scoffed, her cruel nature overriding her fear of Luca. “Catherine, you’re making it sound like a tragedy. You told me yourself that you received a sizable compensation from the agency. You walked away with a clean slate and a heavy pocket.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The entire dining room gasped.

Rebecca stopped in her tracks. She looked at Vanessa, then back at me.

“Compensation?” Rebecca asked, her voice turning cold. “You… you sold me?”

“No!” I screamed, panic surging through my chest. “No, I didn’t! That’s a lie!”

“Is it?” Vanessa sneered, reaching into her small designer clutch. She pulled out a folded, yellowed piece of paper. “I found this in your personnel file when I was updating the staff records last week.”

She unfolded the paper and held it up.

“A bank deposit receipt,” Vanessa announced to the room. “For twenty-five thousand dollars. Dated three days after Rebecca was born.”

The world began to spin.

I recognized the receipt. But I had never put it in my personnel file.

“Where did you get that?” I breathed, terrified.

“Does it matter?” Vanessa smirked. “You took the money, Catherine. You didn’t give her up out of love. You gave her up for a payout.”

Rebecca backed away from me, her face pale with horror and betrayal.

“You sold me,” Rebecca whispered, shaking her head.

“Rebecca, please, listen to me,” I begged, reaching out my hands. “It’s not what you think!”

“Don’t touch me!” she cried, stepping further back.

Luca didn’t look at the receipt. He looked at Vanessa, his eyes narrowing with a dark, terrifying realization.

“Give me the paper, Vanessa,” Luca demanded.

Vanessa hesitated, realizing she had pushed too far. “Luca, it’s just proof—”

Luca snatched the receipt from her hand.

He didn’t read the amount. He read the signature at the bottom.

His jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might shatter.

“Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice deadly quiet. “Where did you get this?”

“I told you, in her file!”

“This isn’t from Catherine’s file,” Luca stated. “This is a carbon copy from a private bank ledger.”

He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto a man sitting near the middle of the table.

“A ledger that belongs to the Bellini family,” Luca said.

The room went dead silent.

Vanessa’s father, Arthur Bellini, suddenly looked as though he was going to be sick.

“What?” Rebecca asked, confused.

Luca walked slowly toward Arthur Bellini.

“Twenty-eight years ago,” Luca said, his voice echoing in the silent room, “my father partnered with the Bellini family to manage our offshore accounts. Arthur Bellini was the only man with the authority to sign these specific transfer receipts.”

Luca dropped the receipt onto Arthur’s plate.

“Why did you pay twenty-five thousand dollars to a fake adoption agency three days after Catherine gave birth?” Luca asked.

Arthur swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then let me explain it to you,” Luca said coldly.

He turned to look at me, and the pity in his eyes broke my heart all over again.

“Catherine,” Luca said softly. “The agency you used… it wasn’t real.”

My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the hardwood floor, Marco catching me just before I hit the ground.

“What do you mean?” I sobbed. “I met the social workers! I signed the papers!”

“They were actors,” Luca explained, his voice filled with a sickening disgust. “Run by a broker who dealt in illegal adoptions for wealthy families who didn’t want to wait on lists.”

Luca looked back at Arthur Bellini.

“Families like the Bennetts,” Luca said.

Rebecca gasped, covering her mouth. “My parents bought me?”

Arthur Bellini finally cracked. “They were desperate!” he cried. “The Bennetts were my top investors! They wanted a child! The broker found a desperate girl with no family and orchestrated the whole thing! I just facilitated the payment!”

I couldn’t breathe.

My daughter wasn’t given to a loving home through grace. She was stolen from me through a calculated, illegal transaction.

And the twenty-five thousand dollars on that receipt wasn’t paid to me. It was the broker’s fee, paid by Arthur Bellini.

Vanessa stood frozen, realizing the document she had stolen to humiliate me had just exposed her own father as a human trafficker.

“You ruined her life for a business deal,” Luca snarled, grabbing Arthur by the collar of his expensive suit.

“Luca, stop!” Vanessa screamed.

But Luca didn’t let go. He hauled Arthur out of his chair, tossing him toward the two massive security guards standing by the door.

“Take him to the basement,” Luca ordered. “Nobody leaves this house.”

As the guards dragged a sobbing Arthur away, Rebecca fell to her knees on the floor next to me.

She looked at me, her eyes completely shattered by the revelation of her own existence.

“You didn’t take the money?” Rebecca whispered.

I shook my head frantically, tears streaming down my face. “No, baby. I never took a dime. I just wanted you to be safe.”

Rebecca let out a broken sob and threw her arms around me.

I held my daughter for the first time in twenty-eight years, burying my face in her hair, crying until I couldn’t breathe.

The dining room was empty now, save for Luca, Vanessa, and Marco.

Vanessa backed toward the doorway, her hands shaking. “Luca… I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know about the agency.”

Luca slowly turned to his fiancée.

“You stole a document from my private safe to humiliate a mother in front of her child,” Luca said, his voice devoid of any mercy. “You used my engagement dinner as a stage for your cruelty.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small velvet box containing Vanessa’s massive diamond ring.

He tossed it onto the floor at her feet.

“The engagement is over,” Luca said. “Get out of my house.”

Vanessa stared at the ring, realizing she had just lost everything. She turned and ran out of the room, sobbing hysterically.

I held Rebecca tighter, unable to believe she was really here, in my arms.

“It’s okay, Anna,” I whispered into her hair. “I’m here.”

But as I held her, Rebecca suddenly pulled back. Her face was pale, her expression shifting from relief to a terrifying realization.

“Catherine,” Rebecca whispered, her voice trembling. “If Arthur Bellini orchestrated the adoption… and the Bennetts paid him…”

She looked up at Luca, her eyes wide with fear.

“Why did the broker choose me?” Rebecca asked. “There are hundreds of girls in desperate situations. Why target Catherine?”

Luca frowned. “What do you mean?”

Rebecca reached into her small purse. She pulled out a faded, folded photograph.

“When my adoptive mother died last year,” Rebecca explained, handing the photo to Luca, “I found this in her safety deposit box, alongside my illegal adoption papers.”

Luca took the photo.

I watched his face change. The cold, ruthless Don vanished, replaced by a man looking at a ghost.

The color drained completely from Luca’s face.

He slowly turned the photograph around so I could see it.

It was a picture of me, twenty-eight years ago, pregnant and smiling.

But I wasn’t alone in the photo.

Standing next to me, with his arm wrapped protectively around my waist, was the father of my child.

The man who had left me when I told him I was pregnant.

“Catherine,” Luca whispered, his voice cracking. “Where did you get this picture?”

“That’s Anna’s father,” I sobbed. “His name was David.”

Luca shook his head, staring at the photo with a horrified, heartbreaking realization.

“His name wasn’t David,” Luca breathed.

He looked at me, then at Rebecca.

“His name was Matteo. He was my older brother.”