Edoardo’s gaze shifts back to me. His expressionfolds into something skeptical and confused. He frowns. "I… don’t understand."
"Well," I start, stepping forward, "let me make it?—"
Sophia clears her throat. Loudly.
I pause, biting down my next words, and mutter a quick curse under my breath. Then, pulling myself together, I meet Edoardo’s eyes and force my voice into something that resembles diplomacy. "I’m not just a soldier. I’m not just her guard. My name is Raffael DeSantis. And… I’m your brother."
The room stills as I let the silence hang. Let the weight of the words settle like ash over the polished wood and priceless paintings.
"Half-brother, technically," I add, because it feels important to say it myself. Edoardo stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. Then he laughs, it's short and clipped. It’s the kind of laugh that’s more insult than amusement. "Is this a joke?" he asks, turning to Sophia like I’m not even in the room.
She doesn’t blink. "Unfortunately, not. If you need proof, a DNA test will settle it quickly enough."
He scoffs, waving a hand. "This is ridiculous."
"I have it from a reliable source," I say, stepping forward again, voice cold. "That I’m Leonardo Zanello’s son."
I tilt my head toward the painting behind him, oversized, gold-framed, and glaringly familiar. The resemblance isstriking. The broad shoulders, the hard-cut jaw, and those eyes, icy and sharp, the same steel-blue I see in the mirror every day. The man in the portrait looks more like me than the man standing in front of it.
Edoardo follows my gaze, then looks back at me. Slowly.
Like the pieces are starting to shift, but he still doesn’t want to see the whole picture. Just then, a knock sounds at the office door, and Edoardo’s brows draw together, but before he can speak, the door swings open and in walks Doc Brown like he owns the place, right on cue.
"Jesus Christ, who died?" he mutters, glancing around the room at the frozen faces. His wiry white hair sticks out in tufts like he’s been electrocuted, and his glasses are caught in their perpetual slide down his nose.
Edoardo stiffens. "Doc Brown?" His tone is half surprise, half irritation. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Doc snorts before he pulls a thick envelope from his bag, waving it dramatically. "You’re welcome, by the way." He glances at me, then Sophia, and back at Edoardo. "Guess who just had a rush order run through the lab faster than a cokehead in a strip club?"
Sophia rises gracefully. "Thank you for coming."
"I told you I’d make it happen," Doc grumbles. "Now someone offer me a fucking chair before my knees give out."
"Where did you getmyDNA?" Edoardo asks, suspicion dripping from every word. "You can’tjust?—"
Doc turns slowly, like he’s annoyed at responding to such a stupid question. He adjusts his glasses with one long finger and deadpans, "I have everyone’s DNA on file going back to the eighteen-hundreds, give or take a decade. Your great-great-great-grandfather’s, too. Back when he was still a greasy little stronzo scraping chicken shit off his boots in Sicily."
Sophia coughs to hide her smile. I don’t even try. Even though I do wonder how the old bastard managed to acquire DNA from that long ago. On a second note, I'd rather not think about him going through old crypts…
Edoardo’s face turns a shade redder.
"I run a decent practice, not a fucking kindergarten," Doc continues. "Half your lineage is catalogued in my archives. You think the elite of this country don’t keep tabs on their own bloodlines?"
He slaps the envelope onto Edoardo’s desk.
"Confirmed. Ninety-nine-point-nine. You’re brothers. Half, but still. Zanello’s swimmers visited more than your mother."
The silence that follows is so thick it could be cut with a scalpel. Neither Sophia nor I flinch. This—all of this—was her idea. She told me Edoardo wouldn’t just take our word for it. That men like him only believe what’s printed and signed in triplicate. So she called Doc Brown. And after I agreed to compensate him very generously—because no one gets Doc out of bed without a little blood or money—heshowed up.
If my place surprised him, he didn’t let on. Just stepped inside, took the swab from my mouth, then turned to Sophia with a grin and kissed her on both cheeks. "Glad to see you alive, sweetheart," he said.
She smiled in a way I’ve rarely seen. Soft and safe. She melted into the doctor like she’d known him forever. Later, after he left, she told me the rest.
That he was the only one who ever knew what Roberto did to her. That he was the one who supplied her with birth control behind that sick bastard’s back. Protected her in the only way he could.
I didn’t know whether I wanted to shoot or thank him.
Maybe both.
