Chapter 3 - HIS BEAUTIFUL SECRETARY ACCUSED THE BLONDE MAID OF LYING ABOUT THE TWINS—UNTIL THE MAFIA BOSS DISCOVERED THE SECRET PREGNANCY LETTER HE HAD NEVER RECEIVED
The photograph lay on Natalie's kitchen table beneath a glass of water. Noah and Lily were smiling on the playground swings, unaware that someone had watched them through a camera lens. The image had been taken from across the street. Natalie recognized the red scarf Lily had worn only the day before.
Dominic stood beside the refrigerator, fighting the urge to issue orders. Two security professionals waited outside the apartment building at Natalie's request. They were not armed guards in black suits, not a spectacle for the neighbors, but licensed investigators who knew how to document threats and call the police when necessary.
“Do you want to leave tonight?” Dominic asked.
“I want whoever took this picture to leave us alone.”
“I know. But until we know who it was—”
“Don't decide for me.”
He stopped. “You're right. What would help?”
Natalie stared at the photograph. “I want the children to sleep somewhere they don't feel frightened. I want to be able to explain why strangers are watching us without lying. And I want to know whether you understand that this isn't just a mystery for you to solve. It's their life.”
Dominic looked toward the bedroom door. “I understand more than I did yesterday. Not enough yet.”
The admission surprised her. He was learning to speak without pretending he had already mastered everything.
Natalie's neighbor, Mrs. Bennett, had offered her guest room for the night, but the apartment was only one floor away. Dominic suggested a small house belonging to a trusted family friend, a retired schoolteacher who lived near the lake. He described the place, gave Natalie the address, and offered to have Evelyn verify ownership. Natalie agreed to consider it after speaking with the teacher herself.
“Nothing about this will happen behind my back,” she said.
“Agreed.”
They sat at the table while the children slept. Natalie brought out a second envelope, older and creased. It contained copies of medical records, a sonogram showing two tiny shapes, and a letter she had written after her first prenatal appointment.
“I didn't send this one,” she said. “I couldn't bear another silence.”
Dominic read slowly. The letter described how the doctor had found two heartbeats and how Natalie had cried because she had expected one child and suddenly needed to imagine a life with two. She had written that she was frightened, but also that she loved them already. At the bottom, in smaller handwriting, she had added: I don't want them to grow up believing they were the reason you left. You left before you knew they existed.
Dominic pressed the page flat. “I wish you'd sent it.”
“I wish you'd answered the first one.”
He nodded. There was no answer to that.
The following morning, they went to the clinic for the agreed DNA collection. Natalie brought identification for the twins, and a nurse explained the process in language Noah could understand. The children treated the cheek swabs like an unusual game. Lily giggled. Noah asked whether the swab would make his mouth taste like cotton candy.
“No,” the nurse said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Dominic smiled, then caught Natalie's guarded expression. He looked away, reminding himself that the children were not prizes he had won simply by appearing.
Afterward, they ate at a small diner across from the clinic. Natalie had agreed because the twins were hungry, not because she wanted a family outing. Dominic let them choose their own breakfasts. Noah ordered pancakes arranged like a city map. Lily asked for strawberries and made the waitress laugh by explaining that her rabbit was also hungry.
“Does your rabbit have a name?” Dominic asked.
“Captain Crumb.”
“That's an excellent name.”
“He's a pirate,” Lily said. “He lost his ear in a storm.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “She cut it with scissors.”
“Pirate scissors,” Lily corrected.
Natalie laughed before she could stop herself. Dominic looked at her, startled by how familiar the sound was. She caught him watching and the laugh faded.
He returned his attention to the children. “Would you like to draw a map on this napkin, Noah?”
Noah nodded. Within minutes, the table was covered in roads, bridges, a bakery, a fire station, and a small house with four windows.
“Who's in the house?” Dominic asked.
“Mommy, Lily, me, and Captain Crumb.”
Dominic nodded as though the answer were perfectly ordinary. It was ordinary. That was what hurt.
Back at the Moretti mansion, Isabella had begun her own campaign. She invited three society acquaintances to lunch and allowed a carefully worded rumor to travel: a former maid had appeared with children who resembled Dominic and was demanding money. By afternoon, a gossip account had published the claim. By evening, it had become a headline accusing Natalie of a calculated attempt to trap a wealthy man.
Natalie saw the article while helping Noah with a puzzle. Her hands shook so badly she dropped a piece.
“Mommy?” he asked.
“I'm okay.”
She wasn't. The story repeated the humiliation of five years earlier, only now it threatened to reach the twins' teachers and friends.
Dominic called within minutes. “I saw it. Evelyn is preparing a response. I want to ask what you'd prefer before anything goes public.”
“Don't mention the children by name.”
“We won't.”
“Don't confirm the test or talk about my medical records.”
“We won't.”
“And don't call me your former lover as though that explains everything.”
A pause. “What should I say?”
“That the allegations are false. That I'm entitled to privacy. And that anyone publishing photographs of children should stop.”
“Done.”
Dominic released a short statement through his attorney. It denied that Natalie had demanded money, condemned the circulation of private information about minors, and announced that any disputed facts would be handled privately and lawfully. It did not turn the twins into a public spectacle.
Isabella was furious. She entered Dominic's study without an appointment and found Evelyn Park seated opposite him with a stack of records.
“You're defending her?” Isabella demanded.
“I'm correcting a lie,” Dominic replied.
“You don't know those children are yours.”
“No. That's why we're testing.”
“She could have arranged all of this. The resemblance, the timing, the dramatic entrance.”
“Luca traced the order to bring them into the ballroom to your office.”
“My office handles hundreds of messages.”
“Then help us identify who sent it.”
Isabella folded her arms. “I won't submit to an interrogation because a maid knows how to manipulate you.”
Evelyn looked up. “No one is interrogating you. We are preserving business records relevant to a potential legal dispute.”
Isabella turned on her. “This is a family matter.”
“Then it deserves more care, not less,” Evelyn said.
Dominic placed a photocopy on the desk. It was the certified-mail receipt Natalie had shown him, signed by Isabella five years earlier.
“Do you remember this?” he asked.
Isabella glanced at it. “No.”
“It's a letter Natalie sent after she learned she was pregnant.”
“You have no proof what was inside.”
“Correct,” Dominic said. “That's why we're looking for the original.”
Her gaze sharpened. “You won't find it.”
The room went silent.
Dominic leaned forward. “Why are you so certain?”
“I meant that after five years, old mail is destroyed.”
“Some is. Our legal archives aren't.”
Isabella looked toward the door. “I have a meeting.”
“Then go,” Dominic said. “But don't speak about Natalie or the children to anyone. Evelyn will contact you about the records.”
Isabella left without replying.
Evelyn waited until the door closed. “She knew what you were searching for before you told her.”
“Yes.”
“That isn't proof of what she did, but it's enough reason to preserve everything.”
Dominic nodded. “Luca is checking the archive inventory.”
That afternoon, Luca found the first break. A former mailroom supervisor remembered an unusual request from Isabella: a certified letter addressed to Dominic had been marked confidential and sent to a locked executive file cabinet rather than delivered. The supervisor had objected. Isabella had produced an authorization form bearing Victor Moretti's signature.
Victor was Dominic's uncle, a man who had spent decades treating family loyalty as a debt payable only to him. He managed several holding companies and still believed Dominic was too sentimental to run the organization properly. Dominic had trusted him with administrative matters long after he should have demanded independent oversight.
Luca produced a scan of the authorization. “The cabinet was emptied when the executive offices were renovated three years ago. Most contents went to off-site storage.”
“Where?” Dominic asked.
“A records warehouse in Cicero. The company still holds the boxes.”
Dominic stood. “Get a preservation order through Evelyn. We don't want anyone claiming the files were disturbed.”
By the next morning, the warehouse manager had located twelve sealed cartons from the old executive suite. Evelyn and a licensed forensic records specialist supervised their opening. Dominic waited outside the examination room because he did not want his presence to influence the process.
When Evelyn finally emerged, she carried a transparent evidence sleeve.
Inside was an envelope addressed in Natalie's handwriting.
The postmark matched the date on her receipt. Isabella's initials appeared on the routing label. Across the back, in blue ink, someone had written: DO NOT FORWARD TO D.M. — V.M. AUTHORIZED.
Dominic recognized the handwriting of his uncle Victor.
“Has it been opened?” he asked.
“Years ago,” Evelyn said. “The seal was cut and taped again. We photographed it before handling.”
She showed him a scanned copy of the letter inside. The words were the same ones Natalie had brought to the library. But there was an additional page: a clinic appointment slip and a handwritten note stating that Natalie had been told to contact Dominic directly if she needed anything.
Dominic stared at the evidence. He had not merely missed a letter. Someone had intercepted it, opened it, read it, and deliberately hidden it from him.
“Victor knew,” he whispered.
“Someone using Victor's authorization did,” Evelyn corrected. “We still need to verify the signature and instructions.”
Dominic nodded. The distinction mattered. He wanted the truth, not another convenient story that allowed him to blame the wrong person.
Evelyn handed him another document. “There's something else.”
It was an internal memorandum dated two weeks after Natalie left. Its subject line read: COLLINS MATTER — FINAL RESOLUTION. The body described a supposed payment to Natalie in exchange for silence, although Natalie had never received a cent. Attached was an account transfer request bearing an unfamiliar signature.
“Where did the money go?” Dominic asked.
“We're tracing it.”
He looked at the sum. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Enough to have paid rent for years. Enough to have bought food, medical care, and security. Enough to have changed the twins' earliest childhoods.
He thought of Natalie counting grocery money at her kitchen table while someone had apparently moved a fortune in her name.
“Find out,” he said. “And let Natalie decide how she wants to proceed.”
That evening, Dominic visited Natalie at the retired teacher's lake house. She had chosen to stay there temporarily after speaking with the owner, Mrs. Greene, who turned out to be a warm woman with a garden full of ceramic frogs. Noah and Lily loved her immediately.
Dominic arrived with no gifts. Natalie had told him not to bring any, and he had listened. He sat on the porch while she read the copied letter and the archive memo.
“They opened it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“They knew I was pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“They told you I'd taken money.”
“Yes.”
Natalie pressed a hand to her mouth. For five years she had wondered whether Dominic had read her letter and decided the twins were inconvenient. She had built an entire life around that possibility. Now the truth was different, but not less painful.
“Why?” she whispered.
“We don't know yet.”
She turned toward him. “You trusted Isabella. You trusted Victor. You didn't trust me.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that like it makes the past smaller.”
He lowered his eyes. “I'm sorry.”
She began to cry, quietly at first, then with the exhausted grief of someone who had been strong for too long. Dominic stayed where he was. He did not reach for her or assume he was welcome to comfort her. After a while, Natalie sat beside him on the porch swing, leaving a careful distance between them.
“I loved you,” she said.
“I loved you too.”
“You didn't act like it.”
“No.”
The lake was dark. Inside the house, Lily laughed at something Mrs. Greene said, and Noah asked for another story. Natalie listened to their voices until her breathing steadied.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“We wait for the test. We investigate the records. And I keep showing up only where I'm invited.”
She looked at him. “That last part will be hard for you.”
“It already is.”
A reluctant smile touched her face and vanished.
Then Dominic's phone rang. Luca's name appeared on the screen. Dominic asked Natalie's permission before answering on speaker.
“We traced the transfer request,” Luca said. “The money went into an account controlled by a consulting company. The company was dissolved last year, but we found the beneficial ownership records.”
“Who owned it?” Dominic asked.
Luca hesitated. “Victor Moretti held a controlling interest. Isabella Russo was an authorized signatory.”
Natalie stared at the phone.
“There's more,” Luca continued. “The archived file contains a second note. It references the pregnancy, and it instructs staff to ensure you never learn about the children.”
Dominic's voice became very quiet. “Read it.”
Luca did.
IF THE COLLINS CHILDREN ARE BORN, THEY MUST NEVER BE RECOGNIZED AS MORETTI HEIRS. VICTOR WILL HANDLE THE REST.
Natalie rose from the swing, her face white. Inside the house, Noah called for his mother.
Dominic looked through the window at the two children he might have lost forever. He had believed the lie that Natalie betrayed his family. Now he saw a more terrible possibility: people inside his own family had betrayed Natalie because they feared what her children might inherit.
He ended the call and turned to her.
“I won't ask you to trust me,” he said. “But I will make sure this evidence reaches people who can act on it.”
Natalie looked at the house where her children were waiting. “Do that,” she said. “And understand something, Dominic. If those people come for Noah and Lily, I won't be the girl who walked away with a suitcase.”
He met her eyes. “I believe you.”
May you like
For once, she thought he might mean it.
Inside, Noah called again. Natalie went to him, leaving Dominic alone on the porch with the dark lake and the knowledge that the greatest threat to his children might carry his own last name.
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