Chapter 4: The Daughter He Lost

“Mine,” Lorenzo said.

His hand fell away from the report.

Mara turned it so I could read the conclusion. Probability of paternity: greater than 99.99 percent.

For several seconds, the numbers meant nothing. Then I looked at the two names above them.

Nora Hayes.

Lorenzo Falcone.

“No,” I said. “My father died before I was born.”

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“My grandfather.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “Then he believed it, or wanted you to.”

“Don’t tell me what he wanted. You didn’t know him.”

The door handle moved behind us.

Lorenzo raised his pistol without looking away from me. “Get behind the desk.”

I moved, taking the report and photograph. Mara crouched beside me. We waited while someone outside tested the door again, gently this time.

That frightened me more than the pounding.

“How did you get his blood?” I whispered.

“From his physician,” Mara answered. “With his permission. My copy arrived yesterday.”

“And mine?”

“The clinic sample. Dritan had it analyzed after Danny sent the letters. I obtained the records before I left.”

“So this came through people who lied to me.”

“Yes. You should have an independent test when we’re safe.”

She didn’t try to talk me out of it. Somehow that made the paper harder to dismiss.

“Does Dritan have this?” I asked.

“He has a copy of the clinic result,” Mara said. “This comparison was arranged separately after I contacted Lorenzo.”

“And you brought the clinic files with you?”

She pointed to the bag on the desk. “Copies. The originals are still in their system. I couldn’t remove them without alerting him.”

I folded the report once and put it inside the signed statement.

Lorenzo watched the movement.

“I can keep those safe.”

“So can I.”

He withdrew his hand.

I had spent too long letting other people hold the things that explained my life. My identification. My medical records. Letters I hadn’t even known existed. Whatever this report meant, nobody was taking it away before I had read it properly.

“When we get out,” I told Mara, “you’ll write down where every sample came from. And who handled it.”

“I will.”

Lorenzo stood near the door, listening.

“You thought this yesterday?” I asked him.

“I thought it might be possible.”

“And you let me scrub your floors this morning.”

His face tightened.

“You were gone when I asked the housekeeper to bring you upstairs.”

“I was working.”

“I know.”

There was no excuse behind those words. Only a man holding a gun who suddenly seemed unable to protect himself from a maid.

“How old was the baby when you lost her?”

“Seven months.”

Twenty-seven years ago, I had been somebody’s seven-month-old daughter. I knew that as a fact. I’d never imagined anyone remembering the size of my hands.

“Elena sent me a photograph a week before we were supposed to leave,” he said. “You had learned to sit. She wrote that you kept pulling her hair.”

He swallowed.

“I was angry because I wasn’t there to see it.”

I looked down at the laughing woman beside the horse.

My grandfather had never told me her old name. Not once. I had asked about the man who fathered me, and he’d always found something that needed doing in the barn.

“Why weren’t you with them?”

“I was arranging money and papers. My father knew about Elena. He’d threatened her. I wanted everything ready before I brought you both to me.”

“And the car?”

“An explosion on the road out of New York. I found what was left.”

His voice flattened on the last sentence.

“Elena wasn’t there,” I said. “She lived in Kentucky. She died when I was little.”

“I know that now.”

“You don’t know why she stayed away.”

“No.”

For the first time, I heard how much that answer cost him.

A metallic scrape came from above the cabinets.

Lorenzo turned.

“Down.”

The service panel burst open. A gun barrel appeared, and the desk lamp shattered before I could cover my head.

Lorenzo fired. Mara fell against me with a sharp cry. I dragged her beneath the desk as glass scattered over our backs.

Balthazar stamped in the passage outside the room. His frightened snort filled the doorway recess.

A man dropped from the maintenance opening, landing beside the cabinets. Lorenzo’s next shot struck the wall as the intruder lunged into him.

The revolver Mara had put down lay on the floor, knocked from the desk.

I picked it up.

My grandfather had taught me to shoot. Tin cans first, then the coyotes that came too close to injured horses. I had never aimed at a person.

The intruder forced Lorenzo against the door and brought up his weapon.

“Drop it!” I shouted.

He turned toward my voice.

I fired.

The recoil hurt my wrist. The man hit the cabinets, his gun falling beneath the medical bed.

Lorenzo shoved him down and kicked the weapon away.

I kept staring at the place where the man had stood.

“Nora.”

Lorenzo was beside me. He reached toward the revolver, then stopped.

“Lower the barrel. That’s it.”

I lowered it.

“He’s still moving,” I said.

“I see him.”

Mara clutched her upper arm. Blood had darkened her sleeve.

I set the revolver on the desk and pulled open a drawer until I found gauze.

“Press this against it.”

“It’s only a graze.”

“Then it should be easy to press.”

The door sounded again.

Three knocks. A pause. Two more.

“Matteo,” Lorenzo said.

He opened it a few inches, pistol ready.

Matteo slipped inside with blood at his hairline. Beyond him, Balthazar crowded the passage, looking for me.

I touched his nose through the opening before Lorenzo closed the door again.

“They’ve taken the main house,” Matteo said. “Our people still have the stables and the south ridge. The injured are going out through the lower service road.”

“How did they find this room?”

“Raul had access to every floor plan.”

Matteo noticed the report in my hand.

He stopped.

“She knows?”

Lorenzo nodded.

Matteo looked at me differently, and I couldn’t bear it.

“Don’t,” I said. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. I need somewhere safe before I need a reunion.”

“Fair enough.”

He locked the maintenance panel and shoved a cabinet beneath it.

“We can’t stay,” Lorenzo said.

Mara gathered folders from her desk. I helped her fit them into a canvas medical bag, keeping my photograph and the signed statement separate.

“Why would Dritan pretend there was an embryo transfer if he knew who I was?” I asked.

“He needed a reason to approach Lorenzo without revealing everything he knew,” Mara said. “A supposed Falcone pregnancy would make you valuable. Your actual identity made you more valuable still.”

“And Danny?”

She glanced at Lorenzo.

“Don’t ask him whether you can answer me.”

Mara looked back.

“Danny found your grandfather’s letters. He sold the information. He brought you to the clinic so Dritan could confirm it.”

My grandfather’s funeral. Danny insisting on helping with the papers. The box that disappeared from the kitchen table.

I had thanked him.

Something cold settled behind my ribs.

“He said he was protecting his baby.”

Mara’s hands stopped over the bag.

“Nora, there’s something else you need to know.”

“Then tell me.”

“Danny knew the pregnancy wasn’t his.”