Vittoria makes a sound like she's been punched. Her whole body starts shaking.
"Vittoria—" I move toward her, but Nora's already there, catching my sister as her knees buckle.
"I've got her." Nora guides Vittoria to the couch, holding her as she trembles.
Rafaella watches them, and she realizes what she caused. "Lorenzo tried to protect you from this. When he found out, when our father brought him to meet us. I saw his face. He looked like someone had ripped his world apart. I didn't know it then, because dad told us that Lorenzo was his nephew. Though we never saw him again."
"Don't." I warn her, but she continues.
"I know because that's how I felt when I learned the truth. When I discovered my father had another family. A real family. That we were just—" Her voice breaks. "I wished I'd never known. The truth destroyed everything I believed about my life, my parents, myself. Lorenzo was trying to spare you that."
"Spare us?" Pietro turns his rage on me. "You let us mourn a lie. You sat at his funeral knowing?—"
"Knowing what? That telling you would destroy Mom? That it would tear this family apart when we needed to be strong?" The words pour out, years of justification. "He was dead. The truth would only hurt the living."
"Mom." Vittoria's voice is barely a whisper from the couch. "Does Mom know?"
"No." I meet her eyes. "And she never will."
"Alberto is nineteen." Rafaella's voice pulls focus back. "He's never hurt anyone. He doesn't even know who his father really was. We told him Dad was in sales." A bitter laugh escapes her. "Please. I'm not asking for money or recognition or anything else. Just... get tested. If none of you match, I'll leave and never contact you again."
"How do we know this isn't some elaborate con?" Nico speaks for the first time, analytical as always. "You show up with a sob story about a dying brother?—"
"Here." Rafaella pulls papers from her purse, medical documents, test results, photos. "Alberto's medical records. Doctor's contact information. Call them yourself."
She sets a photo on Pietro's desk. A boy in a hospital bed, thin and pale, but with familiar features. Our father's nose. The Sartori jawline.
"He has six weeks without a transplant." Her voice drops to almost nothing. "I know you hate me. Hate my mother. Hate what we represent. But Alberto's innocent in all this. and I'm begging for your help."
Sophia
I find him on the roof an hour later.
Cigarette smoke curls into the night air.
"Didn't know you smoked." I settle beside him against the railing.
"Old habit." He doesn't look at me, focused on the sky. "Thought I'd quit."
"Your family hates you right now."
"I know."
"You kept a massive secret."
"To protect them."
"Or to control the information."
His head snaps toward me, the embers in his eyes igniting into a blaze. "Not everyone betrays for power, Sophia."
"I know that."
"Do you?" He kills the distance between us in one step. He cups my face, his palms cold from the night air, and backs me against the heavy steel of the access door until my world is nothing but him. "Because you look at me like you're waiting for me to betray you too."
The accusation hits its mark. I do wait for it. For the moment this illusion shatters.
"Aren't you?" My voice comes out smaller than intended. "This arrangement, these kisses, this pretense. Isn't it all a betrayal of what could be real?"
