Chapter 15
Vincent stepped closer to Sophia, his gray eyes burning with a terrifying realization. "Seven years ago, you told me Claire hated the baby because it was a girl. You told me she left the hospital through the private garage with another man. You lied to me."
"I... I was protecting our son's future!" Sophia blurted out, her composure completely breaking under the pressure. **“Lucas needed to be the sole heir!** The Bennett family needed the Moretti alliance! Claire was weak—she was never meant to lead a family like ours!”
The room went dead silent. Sophia had just confessed to the very deceit that had torn my life apart.
My mother took a step backward, her face pale with shame. "Sophia... quiet..."
Vincent turned his back on Sophia, taking a deep breath as he adjusted his cuffs. The sheer rage in his eyes shifted into something much more calculating—the terrifying strategy of a mafia Don who realized he had been played by his own inner circle for nearly a decade.
He turned to look at me, his eyes filled with a desperate, pleading grief.
"Claire," he said softly. "Give me a chance to fix this. Let me be her father."
I looked at him—a man powerful enough to bring a city to its knees, yet entirely helpless in front of the woman he had discarded.
"You had your chance seven years ago, Vincent," I said quietly. "You chose wrong."
I turned on my heel and walked out of the office, leaving the three of them standing in the wreckage of their own creation.
I picked up Emily from the waiting room, holding her close as we descended the elevator to the ground floor. As we stepped out into the rainy lobby, my phone vibrated in my coat pocket.
It was a text message from an unknown, encrypted number.
I opened the message. It contained a single attached document file and a short text:
*“If you want to keep your daughter safe from what Vincent is about to do to Sophia, look at this file immediately. - M.”*
I opened the document on my phone screen while sitting in the back of the taxicab. My blood ran cold as I scanned the high-level intelligence report.
The document revealed that Sophia’s seven-year-old son, Lucas—the boy Vincent had raised as his golden heir—was not Vincent’s biological son at all.
And the real biological father was someone currently inside Vincent's inner circle—a man who was planning a hostile takeover of the entire Moretti syndicate within the week.