Chapter 11 - THE HEIR THEY FEARED
Dante received a message from an unknown number shortly after midnight.
It contained a photograph of Emma entering the storage facility and a single sentence.
Your wife knows about the baby.
For several seconds, he did not understand the message. Emma was pregnant. Everyone knew that.
Then a second message arrived.
The child is not the only heir.
Dante called the number. It had been disconnected.
He summoned Marco and ordered him to identify the sender.
Within an hour, Marco returned with a name.
Catherine Bell.
She had been a nurse at a private Chicago hospital eleven years earlier. She had left the state shortly after Michael Hayes's death and changed her name twice.
"Find her," Dante said.
Marco looked troubled.
"There's more. The hospital's maternity records from that period were altered. Several pages are missing."
"Which patients?"
"One was your mother."
Dante went still.
"My mother was never pregnant that year."
"According to the official records, no. But there are payment receipts for a private delivery."
Dante walked to the window.
His father had been dead for six years. The man had left behind a criminal empire, a fortune, and secrets that continued to poison everyone who had inherited his name.
"Bring Catherine to me," Dante ordered.
"Alive?"
Dante turned.
"Nobody touches her. Nobody threatens her. She answers questions, and then she decides whether she wants protection."
Marco nodded and left.
Meanwhile, Emma sat beside Rosa in the apartment, examining the amended birth certificate. A second document identified Catherine Bell as a witness to the change.
Her father's letter contained one final clue: a reference to a silver locket that had belonged to Emma's mother.
Emma remembered the locket. Her mother had worn it every day until the winter she died.
Inside it was a tiny photograph of Emma as an infant.
She had always assumed it was sentimental.
Now she wondered whether it contained something else.
Rosa watched her open the jewelry box.
"Whatever you find," she said, "you don't have to face it alone."
Emma touched the locket.
"I spent four years believing Dante was the only man who could keep me safe."
May you like
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Now I'm afraid he may be the reason I was never safe at all."
