Chapter 8 - The Family MeetingThe Moretti family had not gathered in one room since Lucia’s funeral.
Not because she was ashamed.
Because she had never understood it.
When Alessandro and Gabriel returned to Greystone with Sofia after sunrise, Elena was waiting in the entrance hall.
Emmy slept upstairs.
Elena had refused to sleep.
The moment Gabriel entered, she stopped breathing.
Four years.
Four years believing he was dead.
Then he was standing ten feet away.
“Gabriel?”
His face collapsed.
“Elena.”
She crossed the hall and slapped him.
The sound echoed.
Gabriel did not move.
She slapped him again.
“You were alive.”
“Yes.”
“You were alive!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You let me raise your daughter alone!”
“I thought staying away protected you.”
“You don’t get to decide that!”
“I know.”
Elena struck his chest with both fists.
Gabriel let her.
Then she broke.
He caught her when her knees weakened.
For several seconds she cried against him.
Then she pushed away.
“Where is Sofia?”
Alessandro turned.
The eight-year-old stood near the doorway beside Anna.
She looked exhausted.
Elena’s expression softened instantly.
“You found her.”
Alessandro nodded.
Sofia stared at Elena.
Then at the staircase.
“Is there really another little girl here?”
Elena smiled through tears.
“Yes.”
“Emmy?”
“Yes.”
Sofia seemed curious.
Alessandro wanted nothing more than to take his daughter somewhere quiet and begin repairing what had been broken.
Instead, Matteo’s final words hung over them.
There was still a secret.
“Gabriel,” Alessandro said.
His brother understood.
“Elena, we need to ask you something.”
Her face changed.
“What?”
“About Emmy.”
Fear appeared.
Gabriel noticed.
“What is it?”
Elena stepped backward.
“Nothing.”
Alessandro’s instincts sharpened.
“Elena.”
She looked toward Sofia.
“Not in front of the children.”
Anna took Sofia upstairs.
The moment they were alone, Gabriel spoke.
“Is Emmy mine?”
Elena’s face went white.
He looked as if she had struck him again.
“Elena.”
“She is my daughter.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Elena pressed her hands together.
“I believed she was yours.”
“Believed?”
Gabriel stared.
“What does that mean?”
She sank into a chair.
“Before I met you, I worked for a private medical company in Manhattan.”
Alessandro remained still.
“What company?”
“Sterling Reproductive Institute.”
Gabriel frowned.
Elena continued.
“I was an administrative assistant. I handled scheduling, patient files, billing.”
“What does this have to do with Emmy?”
“One night there was an accident.”
Alessandro did not like the way she said accident.
“What kind?”
Elena looked at him.
“I was drugged.”
Gabriel went rigid.
Alessandro’s expression darkened, but he said nothing.
“I woke up in an observation room. My supervisor told me I had fainted. I believed him at first.”
Her voice trembled.
“Two months later, I learned I was pregnant.”
Gabriel slowly sat.
“We met six weeks after that.”
Elena nodded, crying.
“You told me Emmy was mine.”
“I thought she could be.”
“You knew there was a chance she wasn’t.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel looked away.
The pain on his face was quiet.
Not anger toward Emmy.
Never that.
Pain over years built on incomplete truth.
Elena continued.
“I went back to the clinic and demanded records from that night. They said nothing had happened. Then someone broke into my apartment.”
“Victor?” Alessandro asked.
“I didn’t know then.”
“And later?”
“Gabriel found the clinic connected to Victor’s shell companies.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“You never told me this.”
“You were already risking everything for Sofia. Then you disappeared.”
Alessandro asked, “What kind of institute was Sterling?”
“Fertility treatments. IVF. Genetic testing. Embryo storage.”
The room became very quiet.
Gabriel looked at Alessandro.
Elena whispered, “I began wondering whether they had done something to me.”
Alessandro felt sick.
“Without consent?”
“I don’t know.”
Gabriel stood.
“We get a DNA test.”
Elena looked terrified.
“Gabriel—”
“I don’t care what it says.”
She blinked.
“Emmy is my daughter.”
His voice broke slightly.
“I held her when she had pneumonia. I taught her to say pancake. I stayed awake every night for the first six months because she wouldn’t sleep unless someone walked around the room.”
Elena covered her mouth.
“But I need to know what they did.”
Alessandro agreed.
A private physician arrived within the hour.
Samples were taken from Gabriel, Alessandro, Elena, and Emmy.
While they waited, Sofia sat in the conservatory drawing.
Alessandro stood outside the doorway.
He wanted to enter.
Could not.
Every time he tried, he wondered what a father was supposed to say after five years.
Eventually Sofia looked up.
“You can come in.”
Alessandro nearly smiled.
“Thank you.”
He sat across from her.
She drew a house beside a lake.
“Northstar?”
She nodded.
“Do you like it there?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go back?”
Her crayon stopped.
“Do I have to live here now?”
Alessandro considered the answer carefully.
“You don’t have to do anything today.”
“Gabriel said this was my home.”
“It was.”
“Is it still?”
“If you want it to be.”
She looked around.
“It’s big.”
“Yes.”
“Too big.”
He almost laughed.
“Sometimes.”
She studied him.
“Did you really think I died?”
“Yes.”
“Did you cry?”
The question surprised him.
“Every day.”
She stared.
“Grown men cry?”
“The smart ones do.”
That made her smile slightly.
Alessandro’s heart tightened.
For several minutes they sat quietly.
Then she pointed at his collar.
“You have the mark too.”
He touched the hidden birthmark.
“How did you know?”
“Mommy showed me once.”
Alessandro froze.
“Your mother?”
Sofia nodded.
“She said I had Grandpa’s moon.”
He remembered Lucia calling it that.
The Moretti moon.
A crescent birthmark.
Sofia returned to drawing.
“Emmy has one.”
“Yes.”
“Is she family?”
“We’re trying to find out.”
That evening, the results arrived.
The doctor requested Alessandro, Gabriel, and Elena privately.
Gabriel stood beside the fireplace.
Elena held his hand despite everything.
The doctor opened the report.
“Gabriel, you are not Emmy’s biological father.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Gabriel’s fingers tightened around hers.
“But she is related to the Moretti family.”
Alessandro stared.
“How closely?”
The doctor hesitated.
“The profile is unusual.”
“Explain.”
“Emmy shares enough genetic markers with Mr. Alessandro Moretti to suggest a parent-child relationship.”
Nobody moved.
Alessandro thought he had misheard.
“What?”
Gabriel turned.
The doctor continued carefully.
“Based on these samples, Alessandro is almost certainly Emmy’s biological father.”
Elena stood so fast the chair fell.
“No.”
Alessandro’s face went blank.
“That’s impossible.”
“I repeated the test.”
“I have never been with Elena.”
“I know,” Elena whispered.
Gabriel stared between them.
“How?”
Then Elena understood.
The fertility clinic.
Her hands began shaking.
“Oh my God.”
Alessandro looked at the doctor.
“Could stored reproductive material be used?”
“Yes.”
“With IVF or insemination.”
Alessandro’s stomach turned.
Years earlier, after Sofia’s birth, he and Lucia had undergone fertility testing because they hoped to have another child.
Samples had been stored temporarily.
He had assumed they were destroyed.
Victor had handled the clinic paperwork.
Elena whispered, “They used your sample.”
Gabriel looked sick.
“Why?”
The answer came from the doorway.
Sofia.
She had been listening.
“Because Uncle Matteo needed another heir.”
Everyone turned.
Alessandro stood.
“Sofia, what did you say?”
She looked frightened.
“Anna told Gabriel once.”
Anna appeared behind her, pale.
Alessandro stared.
“What did you know?”
Anna looked down.
“More than I told you.”
“What?”
She took a breath.
“When Victor realized Sofia might be impossible to control, Matteo ordered the creation of a second biological heir.”
Elena began crying.
Gabriel’s face filled with fury.
“They used Elena?”
“Yes.”
“Why her?”
“Because she worked at the clinic. She had no powerful family. No husband. No one who would ask the right questions.”
Alessandro felt something inside him fracture.
Emmy was his biological daughter.
Conceived through a violation committed against Elena.
Created as a tool.
A backup heir.
A bargaining chip.
A child who had crawled beneath his dining table without knowing she was entering her father’s house.
He turned away.
Gabriel spoke quietly.
“She’s still mine too.”
Alessandro looked at him.
Gabriel’s eyes were wet.
“You understand?”
Alessandro nodded.
“Yes.”
No rivalry.
No ownership.
A child was not property.
Emmy had a father who had loved her from birth.
Now she also had a biological father who had only just discovered she existed.
Elena wiped her tears.
“What happens now?”
Alessandro answered immediately.
“Nothing changes for Emmy unless you want it to.”
Elena looked surprised.
“I won’t take her from you.”
Gabriel stared at him.
Alessandro continued.
“She knows you as her father.”
He looked at his brother.
“You are her father.”
Gabriel lowered his head.
“And you?”
Alessandro glanced toward the stairs.
“I’ll become whatever she needs me to become.”
Before anyone could answer, Marco entered.
“We found Matteo.”
Alessandro turned.
“Where?”
“He hasn’t left the country.”
“Then where is he?”
Marco placed a photograph on the table.
A familiar stone building.
The Moretti family courthouse foundation in Manhattan.
“He’s meeting three trust attorneys tomorrow morning.”
Gabriel understood.
“He’s trying to activate the succession clause.”
“Exactly.”
“If he proves Sofia legally dead and exposes Emmy as your biological child—”
“He can challenge both identities.”
Elena looked confused.
“Why?”
Alessandro’s face hardened.
“Because he created Emmy through an illegal procedure. If he controls the evidence, he can threaten to expose everything, destroy the trust, and bury us in litigation.”
Gabriel smiled without humor.
“So what do we do?”
Alessandro looked toward the room where his two daughters were now sitting together.
Sofia was showing Emmy how to draw stars.
For the first time, Alessandro saw what Matteo had never understood.
The children were not weaknesses.
May you like
They were the reason this ended now.
“We stop hiding.”
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