Chapter 2 - The Eight-Year Search
Abigail’s stomach dropped into a cold, bottomless pit.
Eight years?
She stared up at Matteo Romano, her pale face drained of what little color it had left. "I... I don't understand, sir. I've never met you before."
Before Matteo could answer, a sudden movement near the front of the ballroom drew the crowd's attention.
A young woman stepped out from behind the velvet curtains near the orchestra stage. She was twenty-five years old, delicate, dressed in a soft powder-blue silk gown, her dark hair pinned up with pearl clips. She was stunning, but her eyes were red-rimmed, pooled with tears that were spilling over her dark lashes.
Isabella Romano.
Matteo’s younger sister. The quiet, elusive heiress of the Romano estate who rarely appeared in public, guarded around the clock by a team of former military personnel.
Isabella wasn't looking at her brother. She wasn't looking at Vanessa or the shattered glass on the floor.
She was staring directly at Abigail.
Isabella covered her mouth with both hands, a choked sob escaping her throat as she rushed across the marble floor, completely ignoring the champagne puddles.
"Isabella, stop," Richard Sinclair barked, trying to step forward, but Geno’s grip on his shoulder tightened, freezing him in place. "Matteo, what is the meaning of this theater?!"
Isabella reached Abigail’s side. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Romano heiress dropped to her knees right in front of Abigail, taking Abigail's cold, bleeding hand into her own warm palms.
"It's you," Isabella wept, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Oh my god... it's really you."
Abigail blinked, utterly bewildered, her hand trembling in Isabella's grip. "Miss Romano? I... I'm sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else—"
"Rain," Isabella whispered, her voice cracking with emotional weight. "Rain against the tall stained-glass windows of St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital. October fourteenth, eight years ago. You were wearing a faded yellow raincoat. You sat in the waiting room chair next to mine while the alarm was blaring."
A sudden, sharp memory hit Abigail like a physical blow.
Eight years ago. She had been seventeen years old, living in a small, damp apartment in Queens with her late grandmother.
It had been a dark, stormy night. She had been taking the late night subway home from her library shift when a massive multi-car pileup occurred on the Queens-Midtown Tunnel access road. St. Jude’s Memorial had been flooded with victims from a overturned tour bus and several crushed passenger sedans.
Abigail had gone into the hospital lobby merely to seek shelter from the pouring rain.
Inside, the emergency room was a chaotic warzone. Nurses were screaming for staff; sirens were wailing outside; and in the corner of the trauma bay, a teenage girl—no older than seventeen—lay on a gurney, her face deadly pale, covered in blood, her vitals dropping fast.
Abigail remembered the frantic voice of the head trauma surgeon echoing through the lobby: "We have a massive arterial tear! She’s O-negative! We’ve pulled every bag from the blood bank, the delivery truck is stuck in traffic on the bridge, and she’s going to bleed out in five minutes if we don't get a direct donor right now!"
O-negative. The universal donor. A blood type shared by less than seven percent of the population.
Abigail had O-negative blood.
She hadn't hesitated. She walked straight up to the head nurse, pulled up her yellow raincoat sleeve, and said, "Take mine."
She had sat in that small, cold donation room for forty-five minutes while the nurses ran a rapid line directly from her arm. She remembered a small, terrified girl lying on the adjacent gurney, holding her hand, weeping softly as her heart monitor flatlined and then slowly stabilized.
Abigail remembered leaning over the girl's face, gently wiping a smudge of blood off her forehead, and whispering: "It's okay. You're going to be okay. Just keep breathing."
After the procedure was done, while the doctors were distracted by another incoming trauma case, Abigail had quietly picked up her faded yellow raincoat and walked out into the rain, not wanting to make a fuss, not asking for money, and not leaving her name on the official medical intake form.
She had just wanted to go home.
Isabella was clutching Abigail’s hand tightly now, pressing it against her cheek. "You saved my life," Isabella sobbed. "The doctors told Matteo that night... they said if a girl in a yellow raincoat hadn't given two full pints of O-negative blood right there in the hallway, I would have died before the surgical team could isolate the artery."
Abigail stared at Isabella, the dots finally connecting in her mind. "You... you were the girl on the gurney."
"Yes," Isabella cried, smiling through her tears. "I was seventeen. I spent eight years asking every hospital administrator in New York for the intake log from that night, but the storm ruined the paper records, and the nurse who treated me passed away three years ago. All I knew was that a girl named Abigail had given her name to a junior orderly on her way out the door."
Matteo stood behind his sister, his expression dark, intense, and filled with a profound, terrifying debt.
"My family does not forget a debt," Matteo said, his voice echoing across the silent ballroom. "For eight years, my investigators searched every medical database in three states for an Abigail who matched that night. I didn't find you because your grandmother's house was demolished, your records were archived under your maiden name, and you lived like a ghost."
He looked down at Abigail's worn catering shoes, her stained black trousers, and her swollen belly.
"And while I was looking for the woman who saved my sister's life," Matteo’s voice dropped into a dark, razor-sharp edge as his eyes slowly shifted back to Vanessa Sinclair, "she was working eighty-five-dollar catering shifts so people like you could slap her across the face."
Vanessa stepped back, her face turning chalk-white. "Matteo... I didn't know! How could I possibly have known—"
"Shut up," Matteo snapped. He didn't raise his voice, but the word hit the room like a heavy iron door slamming shut.
Beside Vanessa, her father, Richard Sinclair, had gone from red-faced fury to total, absolute paralysis. But he wasn't staring at Matteo, nor was he looking at Isabella.
Richard Sinclair was staring directly at Abigail’s seven-month-pregnant stomach.
His lips were trembling slightly. A strange, sickly sweat had broken out across his forehead as he stared at the shape of her body under her catering uniform.
Matteo’s sharp eyes caught the shift immediately. His brow furrowed, his head tilting as he observed the older billionaire's sudden, bizarre reaction.
"Richard," Matteo said slowly, his voice laced with a dark, instantly aroused suspicion. "Why are you staring at her like that?"
Richard swallowed hard, his throat making a loud clicking sound in the silent room. "I... I'm not... I just think we should all calm down and discuss this in private—"
"Who is the father of your child, Abigail?" Richard blurted out, his voice high-pitched, desperate, and laced with an unmistakable panic.
Abigail froze. Her hand tightened unconsciously on Isabella's fingers. "What?"
"I asked you a question!" Richard took a step toward her, completely forgetting Geno's presence, his eyes wild. "What is your father's full name?! What was your mother's name?!"
Matteo stepped directly between Richard and Abigail, his massive frame completely blocking the older man's view.
"Back up," Matteo warned softly.
"Matteo, you don't understand!" Richard stammered, his hands shaking as he reached into his tuxedo coat, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his brow. "Her name... Foster! Eight years ago... my son, Julian..."
Abigail felt the air leave her lungs.
Julian Sinclair.
Vanessa’s older brother. The brilliant, golden-boy heir to the Sinclair empire who had tragically died in a private jet crash off the coast of Montauk seven months ago.
The man who had promised to love Abigail in secret. The man who had abandoned her in a cramped coffee shop the morning after she told him she was pregnant, leaving behind a five-hundred-dollar check and a text message that read: "My family will destroy you if you tell anyone about this."
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Abigail looked up at Richard Sinclair, her eyes filled with an old, deep bitterness.
"My mother was Sarah Foster," Abigail said, her voice clear, strong, and loud enough for every billionaire in the Grand Astoria to hear. "And the father of my baby... was Julian Sinclair."
