Chapter 7
The DNA test happened the next morning.
Dominic did not force it.
That mattered.
He simply placed the kit on the table and said, “Only if you want certainty.”
I stared at the little white box.
Certainty.
Such a clean word for something that could destroy me.
If it was positive, my life had been stolen.
If it was negative, I had become a weapon in someone else’s war for nothing.
Leo sat across from me eating toast with too much jam.
“Do it,” he said.
Dominic closed his eyes.
“Leo.”
“What? She wants to know.”
I did.
I hated that he knew.
So I did the swab.
Dominic did too.
A rush order went to a private lab.
Then we waited.
Waiting was worse than being chased.
Waiting left space for memory.
Rosa showed me photographs.
Valentina at three, laughing in a garden.
Valentina asleep against a woman with dark curls and tired eyes.
Valentina on Dominic’s back, pulling his hair.
I touched the pictures like they might burn me.
“She was happy,” I whispered.
Rosa’s voice broke.
“She was adored.”
That word hurt most.
Adored.
Not abandoned.
Not unwanted.
Adored and taken anyway.
Dominic stood in the doorway while I looked.
“You were eight?” I asked, holding up one photo.
“Nine.”
“You remember me?”
His face changed.
“I remember everything.”
“What was I like?”
“Loud.”
I blinked.
Rosa laughed through tears.
“So loud.”
Dominic’s mouth softened.
“You hated shoes. You bit Marco once.”
Marco, from the hall, said, “Twice.”
I almost smiled.
That little girl sounded nothing like me.
Or maybe too much.
Maybe life had not made me quiet.
Maybe it had buried the loud part so deep I forgot to miss her.
The DNA results came at sunset.
Dominic read them first.
His face did not change.
That terrified me.
Then he handed me the paper.
Probability of sibling relationship: 99.98%.
I stared until the words blurred.
Sister.
Brother.
Blood.
Valentina.
My knees went weak.
Dominic caught me before I hit the floor.
This time, I clung to him.
Not because I trusted him completely.
Because my body had learned the truth before my mind could survive it.
A sound escaped him.
Not quite a sob.
Not quite a breath.
He held me carefully, avoiding my shoulder.
“My sister,” he whispered.
I broke.
I cried for the little girl in the garden.
For the child at Saint Agnes.
For every birthday alone.
For every night I wondered why no one came.
Dominic held me like he was afraid I might vanish if he loosened his arms.
Rosa cried openly.
Leo asked if this meant cake.
Somehow that made all of us laugh.
Then Dominic’s phone rang.
The room chilled.
He answered.
Listened.
His face hardened.
“Where?”
A pause.
“Alive?”
Another pause.
He looked at me.
“Rinaldi has been arrested.”
My breath caught.
“But he’s talking.”
Dominic’s voice lowered.
“He says our father ordered the original cover-up.”
I stepped back.
“What?”
Rosa crossed herself.
Dominic’s face had gone empty.
“My father spent twenty-six years blaming Bellandi.”
“He searched for me.”
“Yes.”
“But if he covered it up…”
Dominic looked sick.
“Then maybe he searched only where he knew you wouldn’t be.”
The room spun again.
Every truth opened into another wound.
Rinaldi’s confession came in pieces.
Dominic’s father, Carlo Moretti, had not ordered my kidnapping.
But he had caused it.
He made a secret deal with Bellandi.
Territory for peace.
A child taken as leverage until terms were met.
Temporary, Rinaldi said.
A week, maybe two.
But my mother found out.
Threatened to expose all of them.
The handoff went wrong.
A Bellandi soldier panicked.
I disappeared into a church drop site arranged by crooked police.
Carlo searched publicly.
Privately, he buried the deal to protect his empire.
My mother died never knowing her husband’s pride had kept me lost.
Dominic listened to the recording without moving.
When it ended, he walked into the garden and smashed his fist into a stone wall until Marco stopped him.
I followed.
He stood in the rain, bleeding from his knuckles.
“I loved him,” he said.
“I know.”
“I became him.”
“No.”
His eyes snapped to mine.
“You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“No. But I know what you did tonight. You chose truth even when it cut your own name open.”
He looked away.
“My mother died grieving.”
“So did mine,” I whispered.
Because she was mine now.
The word settled.
Mother.
Not a fantasy.
Not a blank space.
A woman who had loved me.
A woman betrayed by the man beside her.
Dominic bowed his head.
“I am sorry I did not find you.”
I stepped closer.
“You were a child.”
“I stopped being one.”
“So did I.”
May you like
Rain moved between us.
For the first time, grief did not feel lonely.
