Chapter 16
Dominic’s mask cracked on the fourth day.
Detective Hall presented the hotel records.
Serena’s forged adoption papers.
Payments to officials.
Medical records under false names.
Then the video.
Security footage from the club entrance, fifteen years earlier.
Rocco arguing with his brother.
Alina crying.
A baby carrier in the corner.
Dominic as a teenager standing by the stairs.
Watching.
He had known.
Maybe not everything.
But enough.
Serena left the courtroom before the video ended.
I followed.
She collapsed in the hallway.
“He watched them take me.”
I knelt in front of her.
“Yes.”
“He let me love him.”
I had no answer.
Some betrayals are too ugly for quick comfort.
Alina came out a moment later.
She stopped a few feet away.
Serena looked at her.
For once, she did not turn away.
Alina whispered, “May I sit?”
Serena nodded.
Alina sat on the floor beside her daughter in the courthouse hallway.
Both in expensive coats.
Both crying like lost children.
“I don’t know how to be your daughter,” Serena said.
Alina wiped her face.
“I don’t know how to be your mother without frightening you.”
Serena looked at her.
“Then we learn slowly?”
Alina nodded.
“Slowly.”
Serena leaned against her.
Just a little.
Alina closed her eyes like that small weight was a miracle.
May you like
Inside the courtroom, Dominic was still fighting.
Outside it, the family he stole had begun returning to itself.
