Chapter 3 - WHAT BIANCA KNEW
Luca did not call his mother immediately.
For the first time in his life, he treated Bianca Moretti like a hostile witness.
I learned that the next morning from my attorney, Amelia Grant, a woman with silver-framed glasses and a voice so calm it made aggressive people feel foolish.
She had represented me during the divorce and had never forgiven Luca's legal team for making a simple dissolution feel like a merger negotiation.
When I called her at seven, she answered on the second ring.
"Tell me you did not sign anything."
"Good morning to you too."
"Nia."
"I signed nothing."
"Good."
I heard a coffee machine in the background.
"Now tell me why three reporters are asking whether Luca Moretti has secret twins."
My stomach dropped.
"Three?"
"As of six fifty-eight."
I looked toward the hallway.
The twins were still asleep after their birthday cake and too much excitement.
"There was a phone at the restaurant."
"There is always a phone."
I told her everything.
The resemblance.
Luca's questions.
Bianca's messages.
The certified letter.
Amelia stayed silent until I finished.
Then she asked one question.
"Do you still have the original receipt?"
"Yes."
"Do not give it to anyone."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Not even Luca."
"Especially not Luca."
Amelia paused.
"That answer tells me you remember who he becomes when frightened."
I did.
Luca never became loud when frightened.
He became efficient.
He made lists.
He removed variables.
He solved things until they stopped being able to surprise him.
Our marriage had become one of those things.
At eight fifteen, Amelia arrived at my house with a scanner, a legal pad, and enough suspicion for both of us.
By eight thirty, she had copied every message Bianca sent and photographed the envelope, receipt, ultrasound, and hospital records.
At eight forty-two, Luca's attorney called her.
Amelia put the phone on speaker.
"Ms. Grant, this is Thomas Vail for Luca Moretti."
"I remember you, Thomas."
His pause told me he remembered her too.
"Mr. Moretti would like to arrange a private meeting with Ms. Carter."
"No."
"We have not discussed terms."
"The answer remains no."
"He is prepared to accommodate any reasonable condition."
Amelia looked at me.
I shook my head.
"My client will communicate through counsel until we understand the situation."
Thomas lowered his voice.
"The situation is that two six-year-old children may be Mr. Moretti's biological children."
"And that your client's mother appears to have intercepted certified notice of the pregnancy."
Silence.
Long enough to matter.
"I was not aware of that."
"Then your morning is about to become more interesting."
Amelia disconnected.
I stared at her.
"Was that necessary?"
"Completely."
"You just told his lawyer."
"His lawyer was going to know by lunch."
She leaned back.
"I would rather he know that we have evidence before anyone decides evidence is inconvenient."
My phone vibrated.
A new message from Bianca.
WE SHOULD SPEAK WOMAN TO WOMAN.
Amelia read it over my shoulder.
"No."
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face did."
Another message arrived.
LUCA DOES NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING THEN.
Then another.
NEITHER DID YOU.
Amelia's expression changed.
"Save those."
"I am."
At nine twelve, Luca called.
I declined it.
At nine thirteen, he called Amelia.
She answered on speaker.
"Mr. Moretti."
"Put Nia on."
"No."
"Amelia."
I remembered the first time Luca met her during our divorce.
He had tried the same tone.
She had smiled and asked whether he planned to bill her for the command.
Now she sounded almost bored.
"Your attorney knows how to reach me."
"My attorney did not know my mother intercepted a letter telling me I had children."
"Now he does."
"I need to hear it from Nia."
Amelia looked at me.
I hesitated.
Then I took the phone.
"You already heard it."
Luca exhaled.
"I found the mail log."
My skin went cold.
"What mail log?"
"Moretti Global kept scanned entry records for all certified deliveries."
"From six years ago?"
"Compliance archives everything."
I almost laughed at the irony.
A corporation had preserved the truth more faithfully than our marriage had.
"And?"
"Your letter arrived at ten eighteen in the morning."
"Who signed for it?"
Luca did not answer immediately.
"My mother."
My chest tightened even though I had expected it.
"She was in your office?"
"She chaired the foundation meeting that day."
"Did she normally sign for your mail?"
"Never."
Amelia leaned closer to the phone.
"Do you have a copy of that record, Mr. Moretti?"
"Yes."
"Preserve it."
"I already did."
Then Luca said my name.
"There is more."
I did not want there to be more.
"What?"
"The envelope was scanned at reception before delivery."
"My envelope?"
"Front and back."
"Why?"
"Security protocol."
He swallowed.
"Your return address was visible."
I understood before he finished.
"So she knew it was from me before she signed."
"Yes."
The room seemed to tilt.
For years, I had imagined the letter sitting unopened in a mailroom, lost under contracts or discarded by an assistant who thought I was an ex-wife seeking attention.
That story had hurt.
This one was worse.
Bianca had seen my name.
She had taken the letter deliberately.
"Did you confront her?"
"Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because she texted me at seven this morning."
I sat straighter.
"What did she say?"
Luca's voice hardened.
"She asked if I had slept well."
I waited.
"That's all?"
"She never asks that."
Amelia gave me a look that said rich families could make paranoia sound reasonable.
Luca continued.
"Then she asked whether Evelyn and I enjoyed the restaurant."
My heartbeat changed.
"She knows."
"Yes."
"Maybe she saw the gossip calls."
"The story has not published."
"Someone could have told her."
"Someone did."
He sounded certain.
"My mother has been calling people in my office since six thirty."
"How do you know?"
"Because I changed her access permissions at six twenty-five."
There it was.
Efficiency.
Fear transformed into control.
"Luca, listen to me."
"I am."
"Do not drag the twins into a war with your mother."
"She dragged them into it six years ago."
"They do not know her."
"Neither do I, apparently."
His voice cracked around the last word.
For the first time, I understood that Luca was not only discovering children.
He was discovering that the person he trusted most might have stolen them from him.
I did not feel sorry for him.
Not yet.
But I understood the shape of the wound.
"There is something else," he said.
"What now?"
"I pulled the old fertility records."
I went still.
"Why?"
"Because you said someone planted the idea that you were the problem."
A memory flashed.
Bianca sitting beside me in a private clinic waiting room.
Her hand over mine.
Her voice gentle.
Sometimes a woman has to love a man enough to release him from a future she cannot give him.
I had gone home and cried in the shower so Luca would not hear.
"What did you find?"
"I found two versions of the same consultation summary."
Amelia's pen stopped moving.
"Two versions?"
"One in the patient portal archive."
Luca's voice became almost mechanical.
"One in the clinic's billing backup."
"And?"
"The first says you had severely diminished ovarian reserve."
My mouth went dry.
That was the phrase Bianca had repeated to me.
The phrase I had believed explained everything.
"The second does not."
I could not speak.
Amelia did it for me.
"What does the second version say?"
Luca breathed in.
"It says Nia's ovarian reserve was within normal range for age, with no identified female-factor infertility."
The kitchen disappeared around me.
Six years of guilt collapsed into one sentence.
I had hated my body for failing us.
I had apologized to Luca after appointments.
I had lain awake wondering whether a better woman could give him what I could not.
And somewhere, apparently, there had been a document saying none of that was true.
"Who changed it?" I whispered.
"I don't know yet."
"You told me the doctor said I had almost no chance naturally."
"I told you what my mother showed me after she said the clinic had sent an updated interpretation."
The admission took me backward in time.
I saw Luca standing by the penthouse window, phone in his hand, avoiding my eyes.
I remembered asking what had changed.
He said the clinic had clarified my results.
He never showed me the report.
I had been too ashamed to ask.
"You believed her."
"Yes."
"Instead of me."
"You said you hadn't seen the update."
"Because there was no update."
"I know that now."
Anger rose so fast I had to stand.
"You know it now."
"Nia."
"You let me believe my body destroyed our marriage."
"I believed it too."
"That does not make it better."
"I know."
"Stop saying you know."
The twins appeared in the doorway wearing pajamas.
I lowered my voice immediately.
Leo rubbed one eye.
"Mom?"
"I'm okay."
Luca heard him.
The line went silent.
Lia looked at my phone.
"Is that him?"
I could not lie.
"Yes."
She walked closer.
"Can I say hi?"
Luca made a sound so small I almost missed it.
I looked at Amelia.
She did not advise me.
This was not a legal question.
It was a mother question.
I put the phone on speaker and set it on the table.
"Luca, Lia wants to say hello."
He did not answer for two seconds.
Then his voice came carefully.
"Hello, Lia."
She smiled at the phone.
"Hi."
"Happy birthday for yesterday."
"Thank you."
"Your dinosaur drawing was very good."
Lia's smile disappeared.
"How did you see it?"
Luca froze.
So did I.
He had seen the napkin at the restaurant.
That was innocent.
But to a six-year-old, it sounded like something else.
"It was on your table when I came over," he explained quickly.
"Oh."
She thought about that.
"Do you like dinosaurs?"
"I can learn."
Lia seemed to approve.
Then Leo stepped forward.
"Are you really our dad?"
Luca stopped breathing.
I closed my eyes.
"I think I am," he said.
"Mom says you didn't know."
"She's right."
"Why?"
Luca could have blamed me.
He could have told the children I kept them secret.
Instead, he said something I did not expect.
"Because the adults made mistakes before you were born, and none of those mistakes were yours."
Leo stared at the phone.
"Did you want kids?"
Luca's voice broke.
"Very much."
Leo nodded as if filing the answer away.
Then he took Lia's hand and returned to the living room.
I picked up the phone.
"That was not permission for anything else."
"I know."
I almost told him not to say it again.
Then he spoke first.
"The clinic administrator who handled our records resigned three weeks after your letter arrived."
Amelia looked up sharply.
"Name?"
"Marianne Holt."
"Where is she now?"
"I don't know."
"Find out legally," Amelia said.
Luca ignored the warning.
"There was a payment to her husband's company two days after she resigned."
I felt the room tighten around us.
"From whom?"
Luca's answer came flat and cold.
"The Moretti Family Foundation."
My pulse hammered.
The foundation had been chaired by Bianca.
"How much?"
"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
No one spoke.
Then my phone lit up with another message from Bianca.
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO KEEP YOUR CHILDREN OUT OF IT.
Under the message was an address.
A private residence on Lake Shore Drive.
And beneath the address, one final line.
May you like
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY LUCA LEFT YOU.
