Chapter 3 - Four Shadows
The library on the first floor was warm, heated by a massive hearth carved from Italian marble, but the atmosphere inside was glacial.
Maria, our head housekeeper who had raised Anthony and me after our mother died, had brought hot chocolate, pastries, and warm blankets for the boys. She had taken one look at their faces, burst into quiet tears, and kissed Elena’s cheek before vanishing to prepare the west wing.
The boys sat on a deep leather sofa, their legs dangling, mugs cupped in their hands. They were exhausted, yet their eyes darted around the massive room—taking in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the antique globe, the velvet drapes, and the heavy mahogany desk where I ran an empire.
Elena stood like a sentinel beside the mantle, refusing to sit, refusing to drink, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“Drink something,” I said softly, pouring two fingers of Macallan into a crystal tumbler. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m not cold, Dominic. I’m furious,” she said, keeping her voice low so the children wouldn't hear the razor in her tone. “You had no right to bring us here. You had no right to bring your armed thugs to intimidate me.”
“Those ‘thugs’ are the reason you and the boys aren't being tracked by Barrett’s private investigators right now,” I replied, walking toward her.
She flinched back half an inch, then held her ground. She was smaller than me by nearly a foot, but she possessed a fierce, wild courage that had brought me to my knees years ago in that little art studio on Newbury Street.
“You think you own everything,” she whispered. “You think because you snapped your fingers and bought half the judges in Massachusetts, you can just buy back the life you threw away?”
“I threw away?”
A dark laugh escaped my throat. I set the glass down on the mantel with a sharp clack.
“I didn't leave, Elena. I came home to our brownstone on a Tuesday night with groceries in my hands and found an empty closet and your key on the kitchen counter. No note. No phone call. No explanation. For six months I tore this city apart looking for you. I nearly burned the North End to the ground because I thought Salvatore or the Marcone family had snatched you!”
Elena’s eyes widened, a flicker of genuine confusion piercing through her hostility. “What are you talking about?”
“You vanished!” I snapped, stepping into her space, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “And while I was mourning you like a dead woman, you were carrying four of my children into hiding!”
“Your father came to me, Dominic!” she hissed back, her eyes suddenly blazing with tears of pure venom.
The library went unnervingly quiet. Even the clinking of the boys' mugs on the table stopped.
I felt the blood drain from my face. “What did you say?”
“Don Vincente,” Elena whispered, her voice shaking with remembered terror. “The night before I left. Two of his men dragged me into a car behind the gallery. He sat across from me in that leather seat, smoking his cigar, and tossed an ultrasound report onto my lap. He knew I was pregnant before I even had the courage to tell you.”
My chest seized. My late father.
“He told me,” Elena continued, her breath catching, “that a bastard child from an art teacher would ruin your consolidation of the families. He said if I stayed, he would make sure the pregnancy never came to term. And if I went to you, he would tell you I had cheated, that the child wasn't yours, and that he would eliminate both me and the baby to protect the bloodline.”
She wiped a tear aggressively from her face, glaring at me with raw agony.
“He gave me twenty-four hours and fifty thousand dollars to disappear. I didn't take his money. I took my savings, caught a bus to Maine, and changed my name until after he died. I survived on food stamps and night shifts at a community college while carrying quadruplets, Dominic! I bled for those boys! So do not stand there in your four-thousand-dollar suit and dare to ask me why I ran!”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
The pieces fell into place with brutal, devastating clarity. Vincente Moretti had orchestrated it all. He had driven away the only woman who could soften me, ensuring that I became the cold, ruthless, unfeeling monster the family needed to rule Boston. He had died smiling, taking the secret to his grave.
A heavy hand touched my arm.
I looked down.
It wasn't Elena.
It was Leo.
The boy was standing beside me, looking up with solemn, dark eyes. He didn't look afraid. He looked curious. He reached out a small, tentative finger and touched the platinum cuff link at my wrist—the one bearing the Moretti crest, an eagle gripping a dagger.
“Are you our father?” he asked plainly.
The breath left my lungs in an agonizing rush. The king of Boston, paralyzed by a thirty-pound child.
“Leo, come here,” Elena said quickly, stepping forward to pull him back.
“Wait,” I choked out, dropping to one knee so I was at eye level with the boy.
My hands, which had signed execution orders and brokered multi-million-dollar shipments, were trembling as I looked into his face. He had my nose, my jawline, Elena’s warm hazel flecks in his dark irises.
Beside the couch, the other three boys—Julian, Matteo, and Lucas—had abandoned their mugs and were inching closer, four little shadows drawn to the man who shared their blood.
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“Yes, Leo,” I said, my voice thick with an emotion I hadn't felt in thirty-seven years. “I’m your father.”
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