Sophia considered.
“And you don’t hide anything from me.”
“Agreed.”
“Anything.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t confront Mateo until we understand Northstar.”
I hesitated.
“Dom.”
“Agreed.”
She nodded.
Viktor returned.
“We traced the sedan.”
“To whom?”
He looked uncertain.
“Registered to Daniel Martin.”
Sophia went pale.
“Rachel’s husband.”
“Not Luca?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Daniel is Luca.”
I stared at her.
“You said Daniel and Rachel Martin.”
“That’s the identity Luca has used for eleven years.”
Viktor looked between us.
“Your brother is Daniel Martin?”
“Yes.”
The room went silent.
So Luca’s car had picked up Mateo.
Voluntarily.
Which meant either Luca and Mateo were working together—
or something far more complicated was happening.
“Go,” Sophia said.
I looked at her.
“Find out what Northstar is.”
I walked to the crib.
Elena was awake now.
Her eyes were open.
Dark.
Unfocused.
I touched one finger gently to her hand.
She wrapped her tiny fingers around it.
I stopped breathing.
Sophia watched us.
“I’ll come back,” I said.
Sophia’s expression changed.
It was subtle.
But I understood why.
Promises had become expensive.
“Come back after you know something,” she said.
I nodded.
“That I can promise.”
The warehouse stood near the river in an older industrial district where Chicago seemed to forget itself.
By the time Viktor and I arrived, rain had begun tapping against the windshield.
The building was narrow and brick, wedged between a machine shop and an abandoned printing company.
No lights.
No cars.
The storage key opened the side door.
Inside smelled like dust and wet concrete.
Rows of metal shelves stretched through the darkness.
Viktor found the electrical panel.
Half the lights came on.
Boxes.
Thousands of them.
All labeled with Harbor Relief dates.
“Two years of records?” Viktor asked.
“Looks like more.”
We searched the aisles.
Near the back was a locked office.
The key opened that too.
Inside stood a desk.
A filing cabinet.
A disconnected computer.
And one blue plastic storage box.
On the lid someone had written:
NORTHSTAR.
I stared at it.
Viktor looked at me.
“You want me to open it?”
“No.”
I lifted the lid myself.
Inside were folders.
Photographs.
Copies of bank statements.
But the first thing I saw was my father.
A photograph taken twenty years earlier.
He stood beside Mateo.
And another man.
My uncle Carlo.
All three were younger.
Smiling.
Behind them was a construction sign.
NORTHSTAR DEVELOPMENT PROJECT.
“What the hell?” Viktor whispered.
I opened the first folder.
Northstar wasn’t a person.
It had been a company.
A real-estate partnership created by my father, Carlo, and Mateo fifteen years earlier.
According to the documents, it bought condemned industrial properties, renovated them, then sold them through shell corporations.
Some became warehouses I still owned.
Some became Harbor Relief properties years later.
I turned pages faster.
“What are you seeing?” Viktor asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
Then I found a list.
Payments.
Dates.
Names.
One name stopped me.
Luca Rossi.
A payment had been made to him every month for eleven years.
Not huge.
Enough to live.
The sender?
Northstar Trust.
Authorized by Mateo Bell.
I sat slowly.
Mateo had funded Luca’s new life.
The story changed again.
If Mateo had wanted Luca dead, why finance him for eleven years?
Unless the payments were something else.
Hush money.
Protection.
An agreement.
Viktor lifted another folder.
“Boss.”
Inside were copies of old medical bills.
Rachel.
Gabriel.
Birth records.
School fees.
Mateo had paid those too.
I felt a pressure growing behind my ribs.
For four months, I had wanted Mateo to be simple.
Traitor.
Enemy.
The man who took Sophia from me.
But simple stories were exactly what had fooled me.
Viktor opened the bottom drawer of the desk.
There was a digital recorder inside.
Old.
Battery powered.
A label had been taped to the back.
FOR DOMINIC.
I pressed play.
Static.
Then my father’s voice filled the office.
My father had been dead seven years.
Hearing him again nearly knocked me backward.
“Dominic, if you ever hear this recording, something went wrong.”
Viktor and I looked at each other.
My father continued.
“Northstar was my mistake. Mateo told me not to begin it. Carlo told me it would make us legitimate. I wanted to believe him.”
A pause.
Paper shuffled in the recording.
“Money disappeared. Carlo blamed Mateo. Mateo blamed Carlo. I believed my brother.”
My skin went cold.
The resemblance was impossible to miss.
My father had chosen family over Mateo.
I had chosen Mateo over family.
Maybe all of us had spent years choosing sides without understanding the game.
My father’s voice continued.
“Then Luca found the ledger.”
I leaned closer.
“He was twenty-six and thought truth was enough protection. It never is.”
Another pause.
“If Luca is alive when you hear this, it is because Mateo kept a promise to me.”
I stopped the recording.
Viktor stared at me.
“Boss.”
I pressed play again.
“Mateo was supposed to get Luca out. New name. New life. No contact. Not even with you.”
My heart pounded.
“He was protecting him,” Viktor whispered.
The recording continued.
“The less Dominic knows, the safer both my sons are.”
I gripped the recorder.
My father had known.
My father had helped fake Luca’s death.
A decision made for me.
About me.
Without me.
Exactly the kind of decision I had made for others my entire life.
The irony was almost unbearable.
Then my father said something that changed everything again.
“If Carlo ever discovers the boy survived, Northstar will begin again.”
The recording ended.
I stared at the machine.
“What boy?” Viktor asked.
I already knew the answer I feared.
“Luca.”
“But Carlo died nine years ago.”
“Yes.”
At least, that was what we believed.
I was beginning to hate that phrase.
My phone rang.
Sophia.
I answered immediately.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Dom, Rachel came back.”
I stood.
“She’s at the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“What does she want?”
“She wants to talk to both of us.”
“About Gabriel?”
A pause.
“Yes. But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Dom, come back.”
“Sophia—”
“Please.”
Her voice shook.
Not with panic.
With disbelief.
“We found something in the baby’s records.”
My stomach dropped.
“What records?”
“Elena’s bloodwork.”
I gripped the desk.
“Is she sick?”
“No. She’s healthy.”
“Then what?”
Sophia went silent for several seconds.
When she spoke again, her voice was almost a whisper.
“The hospital ran a family medical screening because of complications during delivery.”
I waited.
“They found a genetic match in an archived pediatric record.”
I didn’t understand.
“What pediatric record?”
“Gabriel’s.”
I stared into the dark warehouse.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Elena and Gabriel are related.”
“Of course they are. If Luca is Gabriel’s father, they’re cousins.”
“No.”
Her voice broke slightly.
“Dom, not cousins.”
Every thought in my mind stopped.
I heard movement behind Sophia.
Another woman speaking.
Rachel.
Then Sophia returned to the phone.
“Come back to the hospital.”
I could barely get the words out.
“What kind of relation?”
Sophia took one unsteady breath.
“The preliminary report says they may be half-siblings.”
I said nothing.
Couldn’t.
Then Rachel’s voice came through the phone.
“Dominic?”
I had never heard it before.
But there was something familiar in it.
Something that made the back of my neck prickle.
“My name is Rachel Martin,” she said. “And before you decide Luca lied to you, there’s something you need to know about Gabriel.”
I gripped the phone harder.
“What?”
Rachel began crying quietly.
Not dramatically.
Like someone who had held the same secret too long.
“Luca isn’t Gabriel’s biological father.”
The warehouse seemed to disappear around me.
“Then who is?”
Rachel did not answer immediately.
When she finally spoke, her next words were soft enough that I almost missed them.
“That depends, Dominic.”
“On what?”
“On whether your father ever told you that Luca wasn’t his only son.”
