Chapter 7 - THE SECRET OF ADRIEN BELANDI
The letter changed everything.
Adrien had grown up believing his father was a brutal but predictable man: a businessman who used fear to protect his empire and expected his sons to continue the tradition.
He had never imagined that Vittorio's secrets might include his own birth.
Yet Celeste's letter had been precise.
Ask your father what happened on the night you were born.
Adrien called his family attorney, Thomas Vane, before dawn.
Vane had handled the Belandi estate for thirty years. He had drafted Vittorio's will, managed the family's properties, and supervised the transfer of assets after Adrien inherited the business.
He also knew which records had been sealed.
When Adrien showed him the letter, Vane's expression changed.
“You need to be careful.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that.”
“Because you're asking questions that your father spent his entire life preventing.”
“What happened the night I was born?”
Vane removed his glasses.
“Your mother died in childbirth.”
“I know.”
“No,” Vane said quietly. “You know what the official records say.”
Adrien felt the room grow cold.
Vane explained that Vittorio had arranged for Adrien's birth records to be sealed after a dispute with a private clinic. The hospital had reported complications. His mother had died shortly afterward. The attending physician had resigned, and the medical files had disappeared.
Lucian had been born three years later.
Their father had never discussed the circumstances.
“Why would he hide my birth records?” Adrien asked.
“Because the records showed that your mother had tried to leave him before you were born.”
Adrien stared at him.
Vane continued.
“She had contacted an attorney and prepared documents transferring a portion of her inheritance into a trust. Vittorio believed she intended to take you and leave the family.”
“Did she?”
“She died before she could.”
Adrien looked toward the nursery door.
For the first time, he wondered whether the family story he had inherited was another carefully constructed lie.
Vane opened his briefcase and removed a thin folder.
“Your father kept a private ledger. He used it to track payments to doctors, judges, officials, and anyone who helped him control the family's affairs. After his death, I was instructed to destroy it.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
The attorney placed the folder on the desk.
Inside was a handwritten list of names.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Dr. Victor Sloane.
Another belonged to Daniel Cross.
The third was Lucian Belandi.
At the bottom of the final page was a note written by Vittorio himself.
The boys must never learn the truth about the clinic.
Adrien read it twice.
“The boys?”
Vane hesitated.
“Your father believed that you and Lucian were not equally entitled to inherit the family trust.”
Adrien's expression hardened.
“Which one of us was he protecting?”
“Neither.”
Vane took a breath.
“He was protecting a third beneficiary.”
He opened another document.
A trust had been established thirty-seven years earlier in the name of a woman Adrien had never heard of: Sofia Maren.
The trust's beneficiary was listed as a child born on the same night as Adrien.
The child's identity had been concealed.
Evelyn, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped forward.
“Could that child be Celeste?”
“No,” Vane said. “Celeste was born years later.”
“Then who?”
Vane turned the page.
The name had been blacked out.
Only a hospital reference number remained.
317.
The same number the children had found on the toy soldier.
Adrien looked at the documents.
“Why would my father create a trust for a child whose identity he concealed?”
Vane closed the folder.
“Because the child was his responsibility.”
The room went silent.
Adrien's father had kept a secret child hidden for decades.
And if the trust records were genuine, the child might still be alive.
Evelyn returned to the nursery.
She found the triplets sitting beside the window, watching the garden.
The little girl had drawn another picture.
This time, it showed a woman holding a baby.
Beside them stood a man with a black bird on his chest.
The woman was crying.
Evelyn sat down.
“Is this Mommy?”
The girl nodded.
“Who is the baby?”
The child pointed toward the drawing's edge.
Three small circles appeared there.
Then she drew a fourth.
Evelyn's breath caught.
“Another baby?”
The girl nodded again.
She wrote a word beneath the circles.
BROTHER.
Evelyn stared at the paper.
The triplets had never spoken about another child.
Their medical records listed three births and no complications suggesting a fourth baby.
But the picture showed four children.
A fourth sibling.
Someone who had disappeared before the triplets could remember him clearly.
Evelyn carried the drawing to Adrien.
When he saw it, he immediately called Vane.
“Find every record connected to Sofia Maren. Every hospital, every trust, every adoption filing. I want the original documents.”
Vane hesitated.
“Adrien, if that child is who I suspect—”
“Who?”
“The beneficiary may be your half-brother.”
Adrien said nothing.
His father had kept an entire life hidden from him.
And now his children were trying to tell him that the secret was connected to Celeste's disappearance.
Before Vane could leave, Matteo entered with an urgent message.
Daniel Cross had been found.
He was at a private airfield preparing to leave the country.
And he had a passenger.
May you like
A woman using a false passport.
The photograph matched Celeste Belandi.
