“You never investigated?”
“She died a week later.”
“Convenient.”
Elena slapped me.
The sound cracked through the hallway.
Every guard lifted his weapon.
I raised one hand, stopping them.
Elena’s chest rose and fell.
“My mother may have lied,” she said, “but she loved me. Do not reduce her death to one of your suspicions.”
No one had struck me since childhood.
No one had survived it either.
But I saw no deception in her face—only grief.
“Lower your weapons,” I ordered.
The guards obeyed.
Elena’s anger dissolved into shaking breaths.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
She stared at me.
“You reminded everyone I am still human.”
For the second time since Lily entered my life, the room saw Adrian Romano soften.
I collected samples of Elena’s blood and sent them to three independent laboratories under false case numbers.
Then we moved Lily to a hidden safe house beneath an abandoned cathedral owned by my family.
As we traveled through the city, Lily sat between Elena and me, holding Buttons.
“Where is Daddy?”
“He had to go somewhere,” Elena said.
“Will he come back?”
I looked out at the rain.
“Yes.”
I had spent my life making promises through fear. That promise was different.
It had to be true.
At the cathedral, Lily found an old upright piano covered in dust.
“Does it work?”
“Nothing in this building has worked properly for fifty years,” I said.
She pressed one key.
A deep note echoed.
She smiled.
“That one works.”
For the next hour, she played single notes and sang invented songs while armed men guarded every entrance.
It was absurd.
It was beautiful.
Near midnight, the laboratory results arrived.
Elena’s DNA matched Matteo’s.
Not distantly.
Closely.
I stared at the report.
