Chapter 3 - BLOOD AND MEMORIES
The private wing of the Romano estate was a fortress within a fortress. Steel-reinforced doors locked behind us as Matteo carried me up the wide carpeted stairs and down a silent, marble-paved corridor lined with oil paintings of stern-faced ancestors.
He placed me down gently on a velvet sofa inside an opulent study lined with leather-bound books and heavy dark wood. Eleanor followed closely behind, clutching a silk shawl around her shoulders, her eyes never leaving my face for even a fraction of a second. Victoria stood near the doorway, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her eyes darting between us like a trapped predator analyzing every possible exit.
A middle-aged man in a sharp grey suit carrying a leather medical bag hurried into the room. Dr. Vance—the Romano family’s private physician—looked flustered, his glasses sliding down his nose as he took in the chaotic scene.
“Matteo, what is the meaning of this?” Dr. Vance stammered, pulling off his leather gloves. “Marco said there was an emergency, but—”
“Swab her,” Matteo interrupted, his voice clipped and absolute. He stood by the cold fireplace, his back straight, his eyes burning into the doctor. “Run a rapid DNA match against my mother’s profile. Use the lab downstairs. I want results in thirty minutes.”
Dr. Vance blinked in confusion, looking at me sitting half-clothed in a ruined uniform, clutching a velvet throw pillow against my chest. “A DNA test? Matteo, who is this girl?”
“Just do it, Vance!” Eleanor snapped, her quiet demeanor vanishing in an instant, replaced by the fiery authority of a mafia matriarch. “Take the hair, take the blood, take whatever you need! But do it now!”
Dr. Vance swallowed hard, nodding rapidly. He opened his kit, pulled out two sterile cotton swabs, and approached me with gentle hands. I sat rigid as a statue as he rubbed the swab against the inside of my cheek, then extracted a small vial of blood from my arm. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me to run, to bolt out the window, to return to the quiet, invisible life I had built for myself in the dark corners of Chicago.
For eleven months, I had been Elena. I was the girl who washed the crystal, dusted the antique furniture, and kept her head down so nobody would notice her. I had no past, no family, no history older than a blurry childhood memory of a sterile hospital room in a small rural town. I had accepted that emptiness. It was safe. It kept me alive.
Now, that emptiness was being torn apart, revealing a dangerous, bloody history that threatened to consume me.
“It’s impossible,” Victoria muttered from the doorway, her voice tight with venom. She paced back and forth, her diamond heels tapping a frantic rhythm against the hardwood floor. “Isabella died thirteen years ago. We all saw the blood. The Morettis claimed responsibility! They sent her bloodied dress to your father’s doorstep! This girl is an impostor, Matteo. She’s a plant sent by a rival family to manipulate your mother’s grief and fracture our alliance!”
Matteo didn't answer her. He turned his gaze toward me, his voice softening slightly. “Where did you grow up, Elena?”
I swallowed, my throat tight. “St. Jude’s Home for Children. In Belleville. I was brought there when I was seven years old. They said I was found wandering along the highway with a head injury and a burn on my back. I couldn't tell them my name. I couldn't tell them where I came from.”
“And your scar?” Eleanor asked, stepping closer and placing a gentle, trembling hand over mine. “Do you remember how you got it?”
I looked down at my lap, the fog in my mind swirling violently. “I… I remember smoke. I remember heat so intense it felt like skin was melting. I remember a man with a heavy silver ring on his thumb holding me down, telling me to stay quiet or he would throw me into the fire.”
Eleanor let out a horrified gasp, burying her face in her hands.
Matteo’s body went rigid. His fingers clenched into tight fists at his sides, his knuckles turning white. “A silver ring on his thumb,” he repeated, his voice dropping into a register so dark it sent a cold shiver down my spine. “A signet ring with an engraved serpent?”
My head snapped up. “How… how do you know that?”
Matteo looked over at Marco, who was standing stoically near the closed door. Marco’s face had gone pale.
“That was the signet ring of Don Carmine Moretti,” Marco whispered in disbelief. “The late patriarch of the Moretti family.”
“Carmine Moretti didn't kill her,” Matteo realized, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of realization and fury. “He kidnapped her. He burned her to make us think she died in the summer house fire, showed us a fake body, and then erased her identity.”
“Why?” Victoria demanded, her voice rising in panic. “Why would Carmine Moretti kidnap a seven-year-old girl and leave her in an orphanage instead of killing her?”
“To hold her over our heads,” Matteo said, his eyes narrowing as he stared at Victoria. “To keep a knife pressed against the throat of the Romano family without us ever knowing it was there. To use her as a leverage chip if the war ever turned completely against them.”
Before Victoria could reply, the door to the study swung open. Dr. Vance walked back into the room, holding a printed piece of paper in his trembling hands. His face was devoid of color, his eyes wide behind his thick lenses.
The room held its breath. The silence was so profound that the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner sounded like thunder.
“Well?” Matteo demanded, taking a heavy step forward. “Speak, Vance.”
Dr. Vance looked from the paper to Eleanor, then to me, swallowing hard.
“The genetic markers… they are an exact match,” Dr. Vance stammered, his voice shaking. “The blood samples share a 99.9% maternal DNA probability. Matteo… Mrs. Romano… this girl isn't Elena Vance.”
Dr. Vance lowered the paper, his hands trembling violently.
“She is Isabella Romano. Your sister is alive.”
Eleanor let out a heartbreaking sob and threw her arms around me, pulling me into a fierce, desperate embrace. She wept into my hair, holding me as if she were trying to fuse me back into her very soul. “My baby… my little girl… you came home… you came back to me…”
I sat frozen, the shock paralyzing my limbs. I wasn't an orphan. I wasn't a nobody from an Illinois farm town. I was the daughter of the most dangerous crime family in the Midwest. I was a princess of the Chicago underworld.
Over Eleanor’s shaking shoulder, I looked up.
Victoria was staring at me, her eyes filled with an unadulterated, lethal hatred. She knew what this meant. The balance of power had shifted. The narrative she had built, the marriage that would unite two empires, was suddenly hanging by a thread.
And then I looked at Matteo.
My brother.
The cold, ruthless mafia king was staring at me, his eyes overflowing with tears that he refused to let fall. He slowly walked over, dropped to one knee beside the sofa, and took my trembling hand in his massive, calloused palm.
“I let them take you,” Matteo whispered, his voice cracking with a devastation that stripped away all his mob boss armor. “I was fourteen years old, Isabella. I was supposed to protect you. I looked for you every day for thirteen years. I swore to God I would tear this city apart if I ever found the people who took you.”
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He brought my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles gently, before looking into my eyes with an intensity that made the room grow cold.
“You’re home now,” Matteo said, his voice turning into cold, unyielding iron. “And whoever did this to you… whoever hid you in the dirt for thirteen years… I am going to burn their entire world to ash.”
