Chapter 6 - The Father’s Empire
Lorenzo did not speak for nearly an hour after Vivian died.
He stood in his study while the sun rose over the ocean, turning the smoke above the estate a pale, ugly gold. Hunter sat on the sofa with Leo sleeping in her arms.
Marco had sent everyone else away.
Finally, Lorenzo opened a locked drawer in his desk and took out an old photograph.
It showed a younger Lorenzo standing beside an older man with silver hair and a brutal expression. The older man had one hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder.
“My father,” Lorenzo said.
Hunter looked at the picture. “Antonio Rossi?”
Lorenzo nodded.
The name was legendary.
Antonio Rossi had built the original empire. Shipping, construction, casinos, political favors, and bodies buried where no one would find them. Lorenzo had inherited the money, the fear, and the enemies.
“I thought he was dead,” Hunter said.
“He disappeared eighteen years ago. Officially, he died in a boating accident off Sicily.” Lorenzo’s mouth twisted. “But my father never did anything without a reason.”
“Vivian said he was behind this.”
“He may be.”
“Why would he want Leo dead?”
Lorenzo looked at his son.
“Because Leo is the future. And my father hates the future I was trying to build.”
Hunter frowned. “What future?”
Lorenzo walked to the window. “Sophia wanted me out. Not out of the business completely. She knew that was impossible overnight. But she wanted legitimate companies. Clean money. No more violence passed down like inheritance.”
“And you agreed?”
“I promised her.”
His voice broke on the last word.
Hunter understood then. The bomb had not only killed Sophia. It had destroyed the one promise Lorenzo had made to become someone else.
“So Antonio thinks you betrayed him,” she said.
“I did.”
Marco entered with a folder.
“We found something in Vivian’s room,” he said.
Inside was a burner phone, several bank transfers, and a photograph of Hunter.
Hunter stared at it.
The picture had been taken before she began working at the mansion. She was standing outside St. Mary’s Hospital, pregnant and alone.
Her blood turned cold.
“What is this?” she whispered.
Marco placed another document on the desk.
A birth certificate.
Noah Vale.
Hunter’s son.
Then another.
A death certificate.
Hunter reached for it with shaking hands.
The document listed Noah’s cause of death as respiratory failure due to premature birth.
But there was a handwritten note in the margin from a private investigator.
Hospital records altered. Infant transferred at 2:14 a.m. No confirmed death.
Hunter stopped breathing.
“No,” she said.
Marco looked grim. “We’re verifying it.”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “I saw him. I held him.”
“You held a baby,” Lorenzo said carefully. “But if someone had access to the hospital—”
“My baby died,” Hunter whispered.
Lorenzo stepped closer. “Hunter—”
“My baby died.”
But even as she said it, a memory tore through her.
The nurse who had refused to meet her eyes.
The strange delay before they brought Noah to her.
The doctor who kept saying, “You need to rest now.”
The paperwork she had signed while drugged and bleeding.
Hunter looked at the photograph again.
Why would Vivian have a picture of her?
Why would someone have tracked her before Leo became sick?
A terrible possibility formed.
“They knew,” Hunter said. “They knew I had just had a baby.”
Marco nodded. “It may not have been coincidence that you were hired here.”
Hunter recoiled as if struck.
“You think I was planted?”
“I think someone wanted you inside this house,” Marco said.
Lorenzo’s expression darkened. “And I think they expected you to become attached to Leo.”
Hunter’s eyes filled with tears. “I would never hurt him.”
“I know,” Lorenzo said immediately.
It was the first time he had said those words to her.
Not I believe you.
Not prove it.
I know.
Marco’s phone rang.
He answered, listened, and his face changed.
“Boss,” he said. “We found Daniel Price’s emergency recording.”
The recording was shaky, filmed inside a moving car. Price’s face was bruised and swollen.
“If anything happens to me,” he said into the camera, “Antonio Rossi is alive. He ordered the baby taken care of. But the maid—Hunter—the maid was part of another plan. They wanted her baby. They said the bloodline mattered.”
The video cut out.
Hunter looked at Lorenzo.
“What does that mean?”
Lorenzo seemed to know.
And whatever he understood made him look more afraid than he had when Leo was dying.
“My father had a son before me,” he said.
Hunter waited.
“A son no one talked about. A son he took from a woman who tried to leave him.”
The room went silent.
“That child grew up hidden,” Lorenzo continued. “He had a daughter.”
Hunter’s face drained of color.
“No.”
Lorenzo looked at her with horror.
May you like
“Hunter,” he whispered, “I think that daughter was your mother.”
---
