Chapter 19 - The Fourth Son
|
"Grandpa Lorenzo framed Cousin Victor himself?!" Julian gasped, his mind reeling as he flipped to the third and final page of his grandfather’s 1999 letter. "Then why did Dad spend twenty-six years wiring his own money to Victor’s widow in Montreal and letting us think it was because Victor was a thief?!"
"Read the last page, Julian," Evelyn whispered, her hands shaking so violently against the mahogany table that she had to sit down in the leather vault chair.
When Victor discovered that Camilla was an FBI informant in 1998, Don Lorenzo had written from his deathbed, Victor threatened to go to the New York Commission elders and expose that the head of the Chicago family had married a federal agent—which would have resulted in the New York families wiping out me, you, Arthur, and two-year-old Julian! Arthur didn't kill Victor in Boston out of greed for my throne, Evelyn. Arthur killed Victor on my knees-begging order to save your life and baby Julian’s life—and Arthur swore a blood oath to me that even if you hated him for it one day, he would secretly pay Victor’s widow out of his own pocket for the rest of his life and take the blame to the grave so you would never know your father murdered an innocent nephew!
A choked sound tore from Evelyn’s throat as hot tears spilled over her lashes onto the 1999 paper.
Last winter in the Stockyards warehouse, when Arthur had been bleeding on his knees in front of her and her three sons, he could have told them the truth right then—that Don Lorenzo had ordered the hit on an innocent man to save Evelyn and baby Julian from the Commission’s wrath!
And instead, even while losing his wife, his sons, and his empire, Arthur Sterling had kept his twenty-eight-year blood oath to her dead father so Evelyn’s memory of Don Lorenzo wouldn't be tarnished!
Wait.
Julian reached into the bottom of Box 001 beneath the parchment charters and pulled out a second, smaller sealed envelope clipped to a November 1998 Mercy General Hospital Birth Record and a sealed Montreal Adoption Transfer.
"Mom..." Julian’s voice dropped to a stunned, breathless whisper as his face went white as marble. "There’s a P.S. at the bottom of Grandpa’s letter."
Evelyn looked down at the final four lines written in shaky ink at the very bottom of the page:
There is one last debt you must guard with your life, Evelyn. In November 1998, when you went into premature emergency labor at Mercy General under full anesthesia, you didn't just give birth to one boy—Damon had a fraternal twin brother born ten minutes after him. Because the New York Commission had sent killers to Chicago that week during the Camilla informant crisis, I told the doctor to tell you and Arthur that the second twin was stillborn—and I sent your newborn son to Montreal with Victor’s widow, Claire Vane, to be raised in secret under a different name where New York would never look for a fourth Sterling brother!
The air vanished from the subterranean bank vault.
Evelyn stared at the November 1998 hospital birth certificate in Julian’s trembling hand:
TWIN A: Damon Lorenzo Sterling (Born Nov 14, 1998 — 2:14 AM).
TWIN B: Richard "Ricky" Victor Sterling — Transferred to Claire Vane, Montreal (Born Nov 14, 1998 — 2:24 AM).
Ricky Vane.
The twenty-seven-year-old boy who had been tied to a chair in the Bridgeport garage—whom Claire Vane had raised in Montreal and Milwaukee telling him he was Victor’s son born in '97 so he would hate Arthur Sterling—and whom Evelyn herself had ordered handed over to the federal DEA and ATF ten months ago to serve thirty-five years in federal supermax prison alongside Valerie!
Ricky Vane wasn't Valerie’s brother.
He was Evelyn and Arthur’s own biological son—Damon’s fraternal twin brother, stolen from Evelyn’s arms while she was unconscious in the delivery room twenty-eight years ago!
May you like
And Claire Vane—before she died two years ago—had exacted the ultimate, twisted vengeance on Don Lorenzo Conti and Arthur Sterling for killing her husband Victor in 1998: she had taken the baby boy Lorenzo gave her to hide, raised him as her own son alongside her biological daughter Valerie, and sent them both back to Chicago to destroy their own flesh and blood without any of them knowing!
"Oh, my God," Evelyn gasped, clutching her chest as the room spun around her. "Ricky... my baby... we sent him to federal prison in Pekin!"
