PART 5 — The Other Child
Dominic did not speak for a full minute.
The hospital corridor around him buzzed with alarms, running feet, and shouted questions, but he seemed trapped inside the photograph.
Baby Girl Moretti.
Sophie held Matteo against her shoulder and felt his tiny breath warm her neck.
Dominic stared at the words again.
“No,” he said.
Not loudly.
Worse.
Softly. Like a man rejecting the shape of the world.
Sophie stepped toward him. “Did Alessia have twins?”
“No.”
“Were you told she had twins?”
“No.”
“Was there any complication during delivery?”
Dominic’s eyes lifted to hers.
“I wasn’t there.”
The confession cost him something.
Sophie saw it break loose from his chest.
“I was in New York,” he said. “There was a meeting. Alessia went into labor early. Victor called me. He said she was stable. He told me not to get on the plane yet because she didn’t want me to see her scared.”
His mouth twisted.
“I believed him.”
Sophie’s stomach dropped.
Dominic looked back at the photograph.
“By the time I arrived, she was gone. Matteo was in the NICU. Victor handled the paperwork. Bianca handled the funeral. Everyone kept telling me to breathe, to grieve, to trust family.”
His laugh was empty.
“I trusted family.”
The next morning, Dominic took Matteo home.
But Sophie went with them.
She told herself it was temporary. Dr. Feld recommended a familiar caregiver during the baby’s transition. Dominic offered a salary so absurd Sophie refused it three times before agreeing to a normal one. Mr. Halpern cried when she resigned from Bellavita, mostly because Dominic bought the restaurant before lunch and fired him by dinner.
The Moretti mansion looked nothing like Sophie expected.
She had imagined gold lions, marble staircases, and men whispering in dark corners.
Instead, the house was quiet.
Too quiet.
A glass-and-stone mansion overlooking Lake Michigan, elegant and cold, with rooms so polished they looked untouched by human life. Alessia’s portrait hung above the main staircase. She was beautiful in a soft, devastating way—dark hair, warm eyes, one hand resting gently over her pregnant belly.
Sophie stopped beneath it.
“She knew,” Sophie said.
Dominic turned. “Knew what?”
“That someone was watching her.”
In the portrait, Alessia’s smile was perfect.
But her eyes were afraid.
Dominic stared at the painting as if seeing it for the first time.
That night, while Matteo slept in a nursery stripped and rebuilt from top to bottom, Sophie found the first clue.
It was inside an old music box.
She had been looking for receiving blankets in the closet when she noticed the box pushed behind a row of untouched baby gifts. It was white porcelain with a cracked gold hinge. When she lifted the lid, a lullaby played softly.
Inside was a velvet pouch.
And inside the pouch was a key.
Not a house key.
A small brass key with the initials A.M. engraved on one side.
Sophie carried it downstairs.
Dominic was in his study, speaking quietly with a lawyer. When he saw the key in her hand, he ended the call.
“Where did you find that?”
“Nursery closet.”
He took it.
His face changed.
“What?”
“It opens Alessia’s writing desk.”
“Then open it.”
He hesitated.
Sophie understood. There were some doors grief locked from the inside.
So she said, “Dominic, if she hid it in Matteo’s room, she wanted it found.”
The writing desk sat in Alessia’s private sitting room, untouched since her death. Fresh flowers had been placed there every week by staff who were no longer employed. The room smelled faintly of lavender and old perfume.
Dominic unlocked the center drawer.
Inside was a leather journal.
A sealed envelope.
And a phone.
Dominic picked up the envelope first.
His name was written across it.
He opened it with shaking hands.
Sophie turned away, giving him privacy.
But his voice stopped her.
“Read it.”
She looked back.
“I can’t.”
He held the letter out.
Sophie took it.
The first line made her throat tighten.
My love, if you are reading this, then I failed to survive what I was trying to prove.
Dominic lowered himself into the nearest chair.
Sophie continued.
Alessia had known someone was replacing her prenatal vitamins. She had known Bianca was meeting Victor in secret. She had known the family attorney had drawn up false custody documents. She had suspected they wanted Dominic unstable, isolated, and publicly ruined.
But the final paragraph turned the room cold.
They think the baby is the prize. They do not know there are two. If I cannot protect both of them, find my daughter. Victor knows where she is. Bianca knows who took her. Trust no one who tells you she died.
Sophie stopped reading.
Dominic slowly stood.
His face was no longer pale.
It was empty.
Dangerously empty.
“There was another child,” he whispered.
Sophie looked down at Matteo’s sleeping monitor on the desk.
A tiny green line rose and fell with his breathing.
“Your daughter may still be alive.”
At that exact moment, Alessia’s hidden phone turned on by itself.
The screen lit up.
One new message appeared from an unknown number.
Stop looking, Dominic. The girl belongs to us now.