Chapter 4 - The Secret In The Blood
The chandelier light seemed to blind me.
I backed away from the table.
“No,” I stammered. “My name is Emma Reed. My father was Thomas Reed. He died when I was—”
“Thomas Reed died in a car crash two days before you were given to Clara,” Richard Bellini interrupted.
His voice was cold. Dead.
He was looking at me not as a person, but as a ghost.
Vanessa stared at her father.
“Dad? What is she talking about? Who is she?”
Richard didn’t look at his daughter.
He kept his eyes locked on me.
“She is the mistake we buried twenty-nine years ago.”
Luca stepped squarely between me and Richard Bellini.
His broad shoulders completely blocked my view of the older man.
“Explain,” Luca demanded.
“My brother, Vincent, had an affair with a factory worker,” Richard said, his voice laced with disgust.
“She got pregnant. Vincent was supposed to marry a senator’s daughter. A scandal would have ruined the merger.”
Vanessa covered her mouth.
“Uncle Vincent? But he died…”
“He died in a boating accident the same week the child was born,” Richard said flatly.
“Or so the papers said.”
June Whitaker let out a bitter, dry laugh.
“A boating accident? He was murdered, Richard. By your own men. Because he refused to abandon the baby.”
The guests at the table began whispering frantically.
Two people stood up and quietly hurried toward the exit.
I couldn’t process it.
My entire life. My struggling mother. My father’s medical bills.
All of it was a constructed lie to hide me from the wealthy family sitting right in front of me.
“Michael Moretti was Vincent’s accountant, and his only true friend,” June continued.
She looked at Luca with immense pride.
“Your father found out Richard ordered the hit on Vincent. So Michael took the baby. He took the factory worker’s child, and he ran.”
Luca looked down at the withdrawal slip on the table.
“And the four million dollars?”
“Hush money,” Richard spat. “I paid Michael to disappear and never speak of the child again. I assumed he dumped the girl in an orphanage.”
“My father didn’t dump anyone,” Luca snarled.
“He gave the money to Clara Reed to raise the child safely. And he invested it so she would never have to worry.”
“But she did worry,” I cried, the anger suddenly breaking through my shock.
“My mother scrubbed floors! We lived in a one-bedroom apartment. She never touched a dime of that money!”
June looked at me with deep sorrow.
“Because she didn’t know it was there, Emma.”
I froze. “What?”
“Clara didn’t know about the money,” June explained softly.
“Michael knew that if the Bellinis ever tracked Clara down, they would check her bank accounts. If she was wealthy, they would know she had the baby. She had to stay poor to keep you invisible.”
My mother had broken her back working double shifts.
She had sacrificed her health, her youth, her entire life, just to keep me hidden from the monsters sitting at this table.
Vanessa stepped forward, her eyes wide with a frantic realization.
“Wait. If Clara didn’t know about the money… and Michael is dead… who withdrew the four million dollars three days ago?”
The dining room went completely silent.
June slowly picked up her purse.
She snapped the brass clasp shut.
“I did,” a voice said from the doorway.
Everyone turned.
Standing in the arched entrance of the dining room was a man.
He looked to be in his late fifties.
He wore a weathered leather jacket, and he walked with a slight limp.
Luca’s jaw dropped.
He grabbed the edge of the table as if his legs had given out.
“Dad?” Luca whispered.
Michael Moretti smiled sadly.
“Hello, son.”
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TITLE: The Dead Man Walking
