Chapter 8 - The Child Nobody Claimed|
Claire stared at the photograph until her hands went numb.
She had spent weeks trying to build a life in which Gabriel's brief existence could be remembered without every memory becoming another wound. Now a stranger had placed a new mystery in front of her.
A brother.
The words made no sense.
Gabriel had been her only pregnancy. Damian had never mentioned another child.
She called Nora.
Nora arrived within twenty minutes and carefully examined the package without disturbing its contents. She advised Claire to contact the police and preserve the envelope.
Claire agreed.
She also called Damian's attorney, not Damian himself.
The attorney confirmed that the photograph appeared to concern a historical matter involving the Moretti family. He warned that its authenticity had not been established.
Claire wanted answers, but she did not want to be pulled back into Damian's world by another threat.
She decided to investigate through her own lawyer.
The first clue was the hospital blanket in the photograph. A small emblem suggested that the baby had been born at a private clinic in Chicago eleven years earlier.
The clinic had since closed.
Its patient records were held by a medical archive, and access required legal authorization. Claire's lawyer obtained permission to examine the records relevant to the photograph.
The file contained a birth entry for a boy named Michael Price.
The mother's name was listed as Eleanor Price.
The father's name was blank.
The child had been transferred to another facility within forty-eight hours.
No adoption record was attached.
Claire felt a chill.
If the baby was connected to the Moretti family, why had he been hidden?
She contacted Damian's attorney again and asked whether he knew anything about a child named Michael Price.
He promised to investigate.
Two days later, he returned with a disturbing discovery.
A private trust had been established for a boy under that name. The trust received monthly payments for several years before the account was frozen.
The beneficiary's date of birth matched the hospital record.
But the trust documents were signed by Damian's father, not Eleanor.
Claire read the copies in silence.
“Could this be Damian's son?” she asked.
“It's possible, but we don't have evidence establishing paternity.”
“Could it be his brother?”
“The records don't support that either.”
The attorney pointed to a second document.
“There's another possibility. Your husband's father may have been protecting a child whose parents were in danger.”
Claire looked at the signature.
She remembered Damian once mentioning that his father had kept a number of secrets from the family. He had described the older man as powerful, difficult, and occasionally cruel, but he had also spoken of him with a strange mixture of resentment and admiration.
She wondered how much of Damian's life had been shaped by things he had never been told.
Meanwhile, Damian continued searching for Eleanor.
The investigators traced the original trust payments to a children's home in northern Wisconsin. The home had closed years earlier, but one former administrator remembered a boy who had arrived under an assumed name.
“Michael was quiet,” the administrator told Marcus. “He rarely spoke about his family. Someone paid for his education and medical care, but no one ever visited him.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He left at eighteen. He said he was going to find the person who had been paying for everything.”
“Did he give a name?”
The administrator hesitated.
“He said he wanted to meet Damian Moretti.”
Damian listened to the report in silence.
“Find him.”
Marcus eventually located a man named Michael Price living in Minneapolis. He was twenty-three, worked as a mechanic, and had no known criminal record.
Damian did not send armed men.
He wrote a letter explaining that he was investigating the trust and asking whether Michael would be willing to meet.
Michael agreed.
They met in a public café.
Michael studied Damian's face with a guarded expression.
“You look like the photographs.”
“Which photographs?”
“The ones Eleanor kept.”
Damian leaned forward.
“Did she raise you?”
“For a while. Then she disappeared. Someone else paid for my care.”
“Did she ever tell you who your parents were?”
“No.”
Michael removed a small envelope from his jacket.
“She told me to open this if you ever found me.”
Inside was a photograph of Salvatore Moretti holding a newborn baby.
On the back, he had written:
Michael, if you are reading this, your mother has failed to return. I am sorry I could not give you the life you deserved.
Damian stared at the photograph.
“Your mother was Eleanor?”
Michael nodded.
“Then why did my father establish the trust?”
Michael's expression hardened.
“Because Eleanor told him I was his responsibility.”
Damian looked at the baby in the photograph.
He had spent his life believing that his father had died without leaving anything behind except a dangerous empire.
Now he was looking at a child his father had secretly protected.
Michael leaned forward.
“There's something else you should know.”
“What?”
“Eleanor told me that my father was not the man who raised you.”
Damian went completely still.
Michael placed another document on the table.
It was an old paternity report.
May you like
And the name listed as the biological father was not Salvatore Moretti.
It was Damian's.
