Chapter 2 - THE BLOOD TEST
The mansion went into lockdown in less than thirty seconds.
Steel security shutters dropped over the lower windows. The electronic gates sealed. Every employee inside the estate was ordered into the main hall while my men searched bedrooms, offices, service corridors, and storage rooms.
Nobody complained.
Nobody was stupid enough.
My name is Dominic Bellini.
For fifteen years, men in New York had learned that when I gave an order, asking why usually meant you were already in trouble.
But that night, for the first time I could remember, I was the frightened one.
Not because of the person hiding inside my house.
Because the newborn sleeping beside my fireplace might actually be my son.
Mia sat wrapped in one of Mrs. Harlow’s thick bathrobes, both hands around a cup of hot chocolate.
The robe practically swallowed her.
She watched every armed man who passed with suspicious brown eyes.
“You have a lot of people with guns,” she whispered.
“Occupational hazard.”
“What’s your occupation?”
Mrs. Harlow nearly dropped the blanket she was holding.
I looked at Mia.
“Real estate.”
She considered that.
“My grandma says landlords are criminals.”
One of my guards coughed to hide a laugh.
I almost smiled.
“Your grandmother sounds intelligent.”
“She is.”
The smile disappeared from Mia’s face.
“They took her in an ambulance yesterday.”
“Why?”
“She fell down.”
“Where?”
“Our warehouse.”
Mrs. Harlow looked at me sharply.
Mia continued.
“She said her head hurt, then she fell. The hospital people wouldn’t let me ride with her because they said somebody had to find my mom.”
“Where is your mother?”
“Heaven.”
The simplicity of her answer hit harder than I expected.
“And your father?”
She shrugged.
“Grandma says he wasn’t ready to be one.”
I looked toward the infant.
Apparently neither had I been.
Yet something violent and ancient had already awakened inside me at the thought that somebody had abandoned him in the rain.
The front doors opened.
Dr. Samuel Mercer entered carrying a medical case.
He had treated three generations of Bellinis and had stitched my shoulder after an ambush ten years earlier without once asking why I had arrived with a bullet inside me.
“Dominic.”
I pointed toward the baby.
“Run everything.”
Samuel stared.
“You believe he’s yours?”
“I believe somebody wants me to.”
He examined the infant immediately.
The baby was cold but stable.
Male.
Approximately two days old.
Healthy weight.
No obvious injuries.
Then Samuel found something beneath the blanket.
A hospital bracelet.
Most of the identifying information had been cut away.
Only four characters remained.
A17B.
Samuel frowned.
“Could be a patient code.”
“Find out.”
He collected a DNA sample from the baby.
Then from me.
“How fast?”
“Several hours if I use the private lab.”
“You have one.”
Samuel gave me a tired look.
“Of course I do.”
He left with two guards.
I turned to my head of security.
Calvin Shaw had worked for me for eleven years.
Former Marine.
No family.
No drinking.
No gambling.
The kind of man I trusted enough to stand behind me with a loaded weapon.
“Camera footage?”
“Already pulling it.”
“Every camera between the dumpsters and the north wall.”
“Yes, boss.”
“And whoever closed that door upstairs?”
Calvin hesitated.
“No one admits being on the second floor.”
My gaze swept across the people gathered in the hall.
Mrs. Harlow.
Three maids.
Two cooks.
Six guards.
My accountant.
My driver.
And my uncle Lucian.
Lucian Bellini stood near the staircase wearing a charcoal suit and carrying the silver-headed cane he had used since being wounded years earlier.
He had practically raised me after my father died.
He was sixty-two now.
Still elegant.
Still dangerous.
Still the one man alive who could insult me without immediately regretting it.
He approached the child.
“Dominic.”
His expression softened.
“If that boy is yours…”
“Then someone used biological material that should have been destroyed twelve years ago.”
Lucian’s eyes sharpened.
“You froze samples before the treatment.”
I looked at him.
Almost nobody knew that.
“My father knew.”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Harlan knew.”
“Obviously.”
“And you.”
Lucian held my gaze.
“I remember.”
Two of those three men were supposedly dead.
My father had been buried thirteen years ago.
Dr. Harlan had died in a boating accident six years ago.
That left Lucian.
I hated that my mind even went there.
He had carried me from the wreckage when I was sixteen.
He had buried my father beside me.
He had spent months at my bedside after the experimental treatment that saved my life but, according to every doctor involved, left me permanently sterile.
Lucian rested a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t let fear turn everyone into an enemy.”
“I survived this long by doing exactly that.”
“You survived because you learned which enemies were real.”
Before I could answer, Mia suddenly spoke.
“Your ring.”
Everyone looked at her.
She was staring at Lucian’s right hand.
A silver Bellini lion ring sat on his smallest finger.
“What about it?” Lucian asked.
Mia’s face went pale.
“I saw one like that.”
My pulse changed.
“Where?”
She pointed toward the baby.
“Near him.”
The room became silent.
Lucian slowly lowered his hand.
“Are you saying you saw me?”
“No.”
Mia shook her head.
“It was dark.”
“Think carefully,” I said.
She squeezed the mug.
“I saw somebody walking away when I came around the dumpsters. A man.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall.”
Half the men in my house were tall.
“Hair?”
“Couldn’t see.”
“Clothes?”
“Long coat.”
“Face?”
She shook her head again.
“But he dropped something.”
“What?”
“A shiny thing.”
“Where is it?”
“I picked it up.”
Mia reached inside the enormous robe.
She produced a silver cufflink.
A lion was engraved across the front.
Bellini family crest.
Calvin stepped closer.
“Boss.”
I took it.
Every senior man in my organization received cufflinks with that exact crest.
Including Calvin.
Including Lucian.
Including twelve men currently somewhere inside my estate.
Lucian smiled without humor.
“Well. That narrows it down to nearly everyone you trust.”
Before I could answer, Calvin’s radio crackled.
“Sir, you need to see this.”
We moved to the security room.
Mia refused to stay behind.
“I found him.”
She nodded toward the baby.
“I get to know.”
Nobody argued.
Calvin pulled footage from the north-wall camera.
11:42 p.m.
Rain blurred the picture.
A dark sedan approached the service road but stopped beyond the camera’s best angle.
A man emerged carrying something.
He walked toward the dumpsters.
Then the video glitched.
Eleven seconds vanished.
When the image returned, the man was gone.
The baby was there.
Calvin frowned.
“That shouldn’t happen.”
“Can footage be deleted?”
“Not without administrator access.”
“Who has that?”
Calvin didn’t answer.
He did not need to.
Him.
Me.
And Lucian.
The office door opened.
Samuel entered.
He looked as though he had seen something impossible.
“Well?” I demanded.
“I ran it twice.”
He placed the report in front of me.
“Dominic, the probability of paternity is greater than 99.99 percent.”
Nobody moved.
My eyes dropped to the paper.
PATERNITY: CONSISTENT.
My son.
I had a son.
For twelve years, I had lived believing that possibility had been taken from me forever.
Then another thought struck.
“If my sample was used,” I said quietly, “there has to be a clinic.”
Samuel nodded.
“Probably.”
“And a mother.”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
Nobody answered.
A guard came running into the room.
“Boss!”
He held a small black device.
“We found this connected behind the phone panel in your private study.”
Calvin took it.
His face changed.
“A transmitter.”
Someone had been listening to my calls.
Inside my own home.
I turned toward Lucian.
His expression was unreadable.
Then the lights throughout the mansion suddenly died.
Mia screamed.
A baby began crying downstairs.
I reached for my weapon and ran.
By the time emergency lights flickered on, I was already halfway across the foyer.
Mrs. Harlow stood beside the fireplace.
White-faced.
Terrified.
The blanket was lying empty on the floor.
My newborn son was gone.
May you like
And the front doors had never opened.
Whoever had taken him was still inside my house.
