My jaw twitches when the woman’s voice drips with venom. “You’re in no position to negotiate. If it weren’t for me, your child would have been dumped in a back alley in New York City, where I should have left you when you shamed our family name by whoring yourself out on your hen’s night.”
“Myfamily name,” Lucia fights back, her words breaking through the shock raining down on me. “My fathernevergave me his last name.”
“Why would he! Your mother was nothing but his whore!”
While they argue, I lean toward Nico. My skyrocketing blood pressure deafens me when I spot the mask Matteo and Nico use when they want to hide their identities from the women they chase through the lemon groves surrounding our home.
Everything I thought I knew had turned on its head, but words still make it through the carnage. “Find something. Anything. Birth records. Hospital logs. A certificate. Anything that can tell me when Gabriele was born.”
Nico raises a brow, but he remains quiet. The only noise besides the unsafe climb of my heart rate is his fingers furiously flying over the keyboard.
Seconds later, my inquiries crash into a brick wall. “There’s nothing. No birth certificate. No hospital record. No official documentation of his birth at all.”
My stomach drops into the same abyss my understanding slipped into.
“But…” Nico’s fingers freeze as his brows pull together. “Something is off with the payment logs.”
“The payments Lucia made to Edoardo?” I’m shocked I can talk. Disbelief is clutching my throat, asphyxiating me. Perhaps I don’t handle stress as badly as I thought.
Nico nods. “They’re regular transfers. Every month without failsince their agreement started. But each April, Lucia makes an additional payment.”
“Why April?” Elio asks, invested.
Nico lifts his gaze to me, eyes dilated. “I don’t know. But it’s the same day as Camille’s birthday.”
The world tilts on its axis as the truth collides into me.
As my wide gaze rockets back to the monitor, seeking more evidence, the woman steps out of the shadows enough to reveal her face.
Recognition steals my breath, but before I can process it or order Giovanni and Matteo to move, a gunshot ricochets out of the speakers, and Lucia stumbles forward, clutching her chest.
