Chapter 2 - The Son I Never Knew Existed

Salvatore Moretti had been dead for eleven years.

I attended his funeral myself.

There were only twelve people there, and half of them came to make certain he was really in the coffin.

So whoever stood outside Apartment 4B was not my father.

I motioned for Sarah and Lily to remain inside the bedroom, then approached the front door without making a sound. My hand went beneath my coat out of old instinct, but I stopped before touching the weapon there.

Thirty years of living one way made certain habits difficult to kill.

“Who is it?”

A familiar voice answered.

“Carlo.”

I opened the door.

Carlo stood there carrying grocery bags.

I stared at him.

“Where did you learn that knock?”

He frowned.

“What knock?”

“The three-two pattern.”

His expression changed.

“My father used it when I was a kid. Why?”

Carlo had worked for me for almost twenty years. His father, Enzo Romano, had worked for Salvatore before disappearing when Carlo was still a teenager.

Another piece of the past had suddenly moved.

I let him inside but told him nothing yet.

Dr. Russo arrived soon afterward and examined Sarah. She had severe pneumonia complicated by an untreated autoimmune condition, dehydration, and exhaustion. She needed hospitalization immediately.

Sarah refused until I promised Lily would remain with her.

At the hospital, Lily fell asleep in a chair beside her mother while Sarah finally told me what happened thirty years earlier.

My mother, Elena Moretti, discovered Salvatore planned to use Sarah’s pregnancy to control me.

At nineteen, I was already resisting my father. He wanted me working for him. I wanted nothing to do with his world.

A grandson changed the equation.

If Salvatore controlled Sarah and the baby, he controlled me.

My mother understood that before I did.

She helped Sarah escape Chicago.

The blood found in our apartment that night had indeed belonged to my mother, but it came later. Salvatore returned after discovering Sarah was gone and attacked Elena for helping her.

She survived.

That was the part nobody ever told me.

My father told everyone she disappeared.

He told me she was probably dead.

Then he moved me out of the neighborhood and surrounded me with his people.

Years of searching produced nothing because I was searching for a corpse.

My mother had actually survived for almost nine years after that night.

Sarah knew because Elena secretly visited her twice.

The second visit came shortly after my son was born.

His name was Gabriel.

Sarah showed me an old photograph she had kept folded inside her wallet.

The picture was worn almost white along the edges.

A young Sarah sat on a porch holding a dark-haired baby.

My son.

I had faced guns without blinking.

That photograph nearly put me on my knees.

“He has my mother’s eyes.”

Sarah nodded.

“He had your temper too.”

Had.

I caught the word immediately.

“You said he lived.”

“He did.”

Sarah explained that when Gabriel was five months old, Salvatore finally located them in Ohio. He sent Enzo Romano—Carlo’s father—to bring Sarah and the baby back.

But Enzo betrayed him.

Instead of returning them to Chicago, he helped Sarah escape again.

The baby went separately because traveling together was too dangerous.

Sarah believed Gabriel would be returned once she reached safety.

He never was.

Enzo disappeared.

My mother vanished for good shortly afterward.

Sarah spent years searching.

By the time she felt safe enough to contact me, my name was already appearing in newspapers beside words like racketeering, violence, and organized crime.

She believed I had become my father.

I couldn’t blame her.

In many ways, I had.

“Why are you here now?”

Sarah looked ashamed.

“Because Lily got sick last winter. I spent everything. Then I got sick too. I didn’t know this building belonged to you until two months after we moved in.”

“And when you discovered it?”

“I wanted to leave.”

“But you couldn’t afford to.”

She nodded.

That explained the fear.

Not everything else.

I looked at Lily sleeping nearby.

“Who is her father?”

Sarah’s expression softened.

“David Carter. He was a good man. We married twelve years ago. He died in a construction accident when Lily was two.”

I felt an emotion I hadn’t expected.

Relief.

Someone had loved Sarah when I couldn’t.

She deserved that.

My phone vibrated.

Carlo.

I stepped into the hallway before answering.

His voice sounded strange.

“Nathan, I found something.”

He had gone home after our conversation and searched through boxes belonging to his father.

Inside an old Bible was an envelope addressed to me.

Nathan Moretti.

Written in my mother’s handwriting.

Carlo brought it to the hospital.

I recognized the handwriting immediately.

My hands shook as I opened it.

The letter was dated twenty-three years earlier.

My mother wrote that she had failed Sarah.

Failed me.

And failed Gabriel.

But Enzo had saved the boy.

He had placed him with people Salvatore would never think to search.

Then came a name.

Thomas Romano.

Carlo’s uncle.

Carlo stared at me.

“My uncle Tom raised an adopted son.”

I looked up.

“How old?”

Carlo swallowed.

“Thirty.”

Exactly the age Gabriel would be.

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