His Fiancée and Her Friend Cruelly Humiliated the Mafia Boss’s Innocent Maid, Leaving Her Trembling in Tears—Until He Came Home Early and Witnessed Everything. What He Did Next Left His Fiancée Begging for Mercy!

Matteo had spent years believing that the worst thing his father ever did was teach him how to become a monster.

He was beginning to suspect that his father had done something far worse.

He had taught Matteo to love people who might not even be who they claimed to be.

The old photograph Adrian had sent arrived at 11:38 p.m. Gabriel placed it on the desk in Matteo's temporary safe house. Norah stood beside the window, watching the street below while two guards monitored the entrance.

Matteo picked up the photograph.

His father, younger and broad-shouldered, stood outside a hospital with Nathaniel Vale. Both men were smiling. Between them stood a nurse holding a baby wrapped in a pale yellow blanket.

On the back was a date.

The day Matteo was born.

“That's impossible,” Matteo said.

Norah turned.

“What is?”

He handed her the photograph.

She examined the faces, then looked at the date again.

“Why would your father be at the hospital when you were born?”

“Because he was my father.”

The words sounded less certain than he intended.

Gabriel stepped closer.

“There's something else. Adrian says the hospital records were altered after the warehouse fire. Someone paid to have three births removed from the public registry.”

“Three?” Norah asked.

Gabriel nodded.

“Matteo's. Yours. And another child born two days earlier under the name Thomas Vale.”

Silence settled over the room.

Norah lowered the photograph.

“That's my uncle's name.”

“Or the name someone wanted us to find,” Matteo replied.

He took out his phone and called Adrian.

The call connected on the second attempt.

“Tell me you have something useful,” Matteo said.

“I have something dangerous.”

“Those are usually the same thing.”

“Your father wasn't simply at the hospital the night you were born. He was there because the woman giving birth had been brought in under an assumed identity.”

Matteo's grip tightened around the phone.

“Who was she?”

“I don't know yet. The original admission record was destroyed. But there was a second patient, a woman who died before dawn. Her name was listed as Elena Rossi.”

Norah went completely still.

“My mother's maiden name was Rossi.”

Matteo looked at her.

“You never told me that.”

“Because I never knew it mattered.”

Adrian continued.

“There's more. The hospital's private ledger recorded a payment from the Falcone family trust. The amount was enormous. Whoever arranged those births wanted the records buried.”

“Can you identify the children?” Matteo asked.

“Not without the original memorandum. The Serrano file includes a transfer schedule and a sealed family appendix. That appendix is the key.”

Norah looked down at the photograph again.

“If my mother has it, then she knows.”

“She knows something,” Adrian replied. “But I don't think she knows everything.”

A sudden crash sounded outside.

Gabriel rushed to the window.

“Movement on the west side!”

Matteo pulled Norah away from the glass just as the first gunshot shattered it.

Everyone dropped.

A second shot struck the wall above the desk.

“Downstairs!” Matteo ordered.

The guards returned fire through the doorway while Gabriel guided Norah into the corridor. Matteo followed, covering their retreat until they reached the service stairwell.

They made it to the basement garage, where a black SUV waited with its engine running.

Before Matteo could reach the vehicle, his phone vibrated.

An incoming video call.

Unknown number.

He answered.

His father's face appeared on the screen.

Older than Matteo remembered, thinner around the jaw, but unmistakable.

For one terrible second, Matteo could not breathe.

“Hello, son,” the man said.

Matteo stared at him.

“You're dead.”

“So I have been told.”