Chapter 2 - THE FATHER I WAS TOLD HAD LEFT
I woke to the sound of a machine breathing beside me.
For several seconds, I did not know where I was.
Then I remembered blood on my sandals.
Bradley's messages.
The operating room.
Two cries.
And Dominic Russo telling me he was my father.
I opened my eyes so quickly that pain flashed through my abdomen.
A nurse appeared immediately.
"Easy, Adriana."
My throat felt raw.
"My babies."
"They are alive."
I closed my eyes again.
The relief hurt almost as much as the incision.
"Both?"
"Both."
"Can I see them?"
"Not yet."
Panic returned.
"Why?"
"You are in the intensive care unit, and they are in the neonatal intensive care unit."
The nurse adjusted the line near my arm.
"Your son is stable on breathing support."
"Eli."
"Eli is stable."
"Rose?"
The nurse paused just long enough to scare me.
"Rose is smaller and needs more help."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the NICU team is watching her very closely."
"Is she dying?"
"No one has said that."
"That isn't what I asked."
The nurse's expression softened.
"She is very sick, but she is fighting."
I looked toward the window.
Morning light was beginning to push through the blinds.
I had entered the hospital before sunset.
The entire night had disappeared.
"How long was I unconscious?"
"About nine hours."
I tried to reach for my phone.
It was not on the table.
My heart jumped.
"Where is my phone?"
"Hospital security has it in an evidence bag."
"Why?"
The nurse glanced toward the door.
"There was a dispute over some documents while you were in surgery."
"Bradley."
"Yes."
"Where is he?"
"He was removed from this floor."
I sank back against the pillow.
"And Dominic?"
This time the nurse looked even more cautious.
"Mr. Russo is in the family waiting room."
The answer made no sense.
"Why?"
"He has been there all night."
I stared at her.
"I don't have a father."
She wisely said nothing.
I remembered my mother telling me the same story whenever I had asked about him.
Your father chose a different life.
Your father was not ready to be a parent.
Your father left before you could remember him.
By the time I was ten, I had stopped asking.
By the time I was twenty, I had turned the word father into a closed door in my mind.
My mother, Laura Cole, had raised me alone until a highway crash took her when I was nineteen.
There had been no mysterious man at the funeral.
No letter.
No inheritance.
No Dominic Russo.
At least none that I had ever seen.
"I want to talk to him."
The nurse hesitated.
"Only if you are sure."
"I'm sure I want answers."
Ten minutes later, the door opened.
Dominic entered alone.
Without the black suit jacket, he looked less like the man people whispered about and more like someone who had not slept.
His white shirt was wrinkled at the sleeves.
There was dried blood on one cuff.
I wondered whether it was mine.
He stopped several feet from the bed.
"How are you feeling?"
"Like somebody cut me open."
A shadow of something moved across his face.
"They did."
"You said you were my father."
He nodded once.
"I am."
"Prove it."
He did not look offended.
He reached inside a leather folder and removed an old photograph.
He did not approach until I held out my hand.
The photograph showed my mother at maybe twenty-five years old.
She was standing beside Dominic on a harbor pier.
She was laughing.
He was younger, but there was no mistaking him.
His arm was around her waist.
Her left hand rested against his chest.
On her finger was a ring I recognized.
My mother had worn it on a chain around her neck for the rest of her life.
I had buried her with it.
My fingers tightened around the photograph.
"A picture proves you knew her."
"It does not prove blood."
"No."
Dominic took another document from the folder.
"This does."
It was a copy of my original birth record.
The version I had used my entire life listed no father.
This one did.
Dominic Anthony Russo.
I stared until the letters blurred.
"Where did you get this?"
"From the attorney who filed the sealed amendment thirty-three years ago."
"Why was it sealed?"
Dominic looked toward the window.
"Because your mother wanted it sealed."
Anger rose through the exhaustion.
"Then she did not want you in my life."
"At the time, no."
"And you listened?"
"Yes."
"For thirty-two years?"
He absorbed the accusation without flinching.
"For longer than I should have."
"My mother told me you left."
"I know."
That answer hurt more than denial would have.
"You knew she lied to me?"
"I agreed to the lie."
I pushed the photograph toward him.
"Get out."
Dominic did not move.
"Adriana."
"You agreed to let me think my father abandoned me."
"Yes."
"You agreed to let me grow up wondering what was wrong with me."
His face tightened.
"There was never anything wrong with you."
"You do not get to say that now."
"No."
His voice dropped.
"I probably don't."
I hated that he did not defend himself.
It would have been easier if he had.
"Why did she want me away from you?"
Dominic pulled the chair closer but did not sit.
"Because when you were an infant, someone tried to use you to get to me."
My skin went cold.
"Use me how?"
"Your mother received photographs of you taken through the nursery window."
I stopped breathing.
"There was a note."
"What did it say?"
"That a man who wanted to keep his family should learn when to lose a business fight."
I stared at him.
"What kind of business were you in?"
"Some of it legitimate."
"And the rest?"
He did not answer quickly enough.
"That is what I thought."
"I was not a good man in every part of my life."
"Were you a criminal?"
"I did things I am not proud of."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the answer I can give you without lying."
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
"How generous."
Dominic sat down at last.
"Your mother told me that if I loved you, I would let her take you somewhere no one connected to me could find you."
"So she disappeared."
"Yes."
"And you stayed away."
"I stayed away physically."
I looked at him.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I paid for things through intermediaries."
"No, you didn't."
"Your apartment after college."
I frowned.
"I paid rent."
"Not all of it."
"My scholarship."
"Covered tuition, not housing."
"How would you know?"
"Because the housing grant came from a foundation I controlled."
I stared at him.
He continued.
"The emergency fund your mother used during the final year of my college came from the same place."
"She told me it was a hospital program."
"She wanted you to believe that."
A sick feeling settled in my stomach.
"Then why did she spend her last years worried about bills?"
Dominic's expression changed.
"She should not have."
"What does that mean?"
"There was a trust."
I almost laughed again.
"Of course there was."
"It was established before you were born."
"I never had a trust."
"You did."
"Then where is it?"
Dominic's jaw tightened.
"That is one of the reasons I am here."
The door opened before I could ask more.
A woman in a navy suit entered with a hospital attorney and a security officer.
Behind them stood a man I recognized from Bradley's law firm.
Graham Pike.
He had attended our Christmas party twice.
He had once toasted Bradley for being the most loyal man he knew.
Now he carried a briefcase and wore the expression of someone arriving for a business meeting.
"Mrs. Mercer."
I looked at him.
"Why are you here?"
"I represent your husband in an urgent family and medical matter."
Dominic stood.
The hospital attorney raised one hand.
"Mr. Russo, please."
Graham opened his briefcase.
"Mrs. Mercer, your husband has provided the hospital with a valid durable medical power of attorney executed last Thursday."
"It is fake."
"It is notarized."
"I don't care if the Pope stamped it."
My voice shook.
"I did not sign it."
Graham removed another document.
"There is also a temporary guardianship declaration regarding the children in the event you are medically unable to care for them."
My heart began pounding.
"What children?"
He paused.
"Your twins."
"They were not born when I supposedly signed anything."
"The document anticipates their birth."
Dominic moved closer to the bed.
"Who is named guardian?"
Graham looked at him.
"That is confidential."
"She is the mother."
I held out my hand.
"Give it to me."
The hospital attorney nodded.
Graham passed me the copy.
I looked at the signature first.
It looked exactly like mine.
Same long stroke in the A.
Same tight loop in the d.
Same slight upward hook at the end of Mercer.
But I had never written it.
Then I looked at the guardian line.
Bradley Mercer was listed first.
The second name made the room tilt.
Britney Lane.
My husband's mistress.
Graham spoke carefully.
"Your husband is asking the court to recognize the document until your competency can be evaluated."
"My competency?"
"He says you were confused and emotionally unstable in the days before admission."
I stared at him.
"He abandoned me, emptied my accounts, canceled my insurance, and now he says I am unstable?"
"I am not here to argue the merits."
Dominic's voice became dangerous.
"Then you should leave before you accidentally do."
The hospital attorney stepped between them verbally before either man moved.
"There is more."
She looked at me with genuine discomfort.
"Mrs. Mercer, the probate court received an emergency petition at 4:12 yesterday afternoon."
I tried to understand the time.
4:12.
I had still been home then.
I had not reached the hospital until after six.
"What petition?"
"A petition requesting temporary authority over your financial affairs and anticipated custody arrangements for the children if your medical condition deteriorated."
My mouth went dry.
"Who filed it?"
The attorney looked at Graham.
Then she looked back at me.
"Bradley filed it before you ever arrived at the hospital."
The room became silent.
Dominic's expression turned to stone.
I looked down at the forged signature in my hand.
May you like
Bradley had not reacted to an emergency.
He had been waiting for one.
