Chapter 19 - THE SECRET ISABELLA KEPT|
They took refuge in Catherine's townhouse outside the city.
The police had secured the Duca estate, and investigators were recovering whatever remained of the records. Eleanor was still missing. Richard's body had not been found.
Marco sat across from Isabella in a quiet room while Lily slept upstairs with Ava.
"Tell me about the second baby."
Isabella stared at her hands.
"I was told there had been another infant at the clinic. I never saw the child. Eleanor said the baby belonged to a woman who had died during delivery."
"Did you believe her?"
"At first."
"And later?"
Isabella looked up.
"Later, I found a photograph."
She described a small image she had discovered hidden inside a medical folder at Saint Agnes. It showed two newborn girls lying in separate bassinets. One wore a blue ribbon. The other wore red.
The photograph had been dated the night of the clinic fire.
On the back was a handwritten message.
Two daughters. One inheritance. One must disappear.
Marco leaned forward.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't know whether Lily was one of the children in that photograph. Eleanor had changed the records so many times that I couldn't trust anything."
"Who was the other baby?"
"I don't know."
"Then what are you afraid of?"
Isabella closed her eyes.
"When I escaped, I was carrying a second hospital bracelet. I thought it belonged to Lily. Years later, I realized it carried a different number."
Marco felt the room tilt.
"Where is it?"
"I gave it to the nurse who helped me. I believed she had destroyed it."
Catherine entered the room holding an envelope.
"We found it in the evidence recovered from Saint Agnes."
She placed the bracelet on the table.
The number matched the second infant's hospital record.
Beneath it was a surname.
DUCA.
Marco stared.
"Another daughter from our family?"
Isabella nodded slowly.
"The clinic had been conducting a secret surrogacy program for wealthy families. Eleanor arranged for embryos to be transferred without the consent of the biological parents. She used private agreements to conceal the identities of the children."
Ava checked the surviving records.
"That means the second infant might not have been a twin. She could have been born to another woman using genetic material connected to the Duca family."
Marco's stomach tightened.
"Whose genetic material?"
Isabella hesitated.
"Your father's."
The revelation was almost too large to process.
Richard had secretly fathered a child through the clinic, and Eleanor had hidden that child as part of a plan to control the family inheritance.
But the question remained: who was the child's mother?
Ava found a sealed page in the recovered documents.
It contained a list of genetic donors and private guardians.
One name had been blacked out.
The original ink beneath the alteration remained faintly visible.
Sophia Moretti.
Marco stood.
"Sophia was the mother?"
"No," Isabella said. "She was the donor."
Ava looked at the document.
"Then the second child may be biologically connected to Sophia and Richard."
Marco remembered Sophia's fury when Lily arrived. Her fear had not been about the pendant alone. She had recognized the possibility that the child might expose the secret she had spent years protecting.
Ava turned another page.
"There's a current address attached to the second child's file."
"Where?"
"Boston."
Marco looked toward the staircase.
Lily stood there, holding her notebook.
She had heard everything.
She approached the table and drew a woman standing beside a hospital bed.
Then she wrote a name.
SOPHIA.
Beneath it, she wrote another.
SISTER.
Marco stared at the page.
Lily pointed at the drawing, then at herself.
Isabella covered her mouth.
The missing child might not be a stranger.
May you like
She might be Lily's sister.
And Sophia might know exactly where she was.
