Chapter 21
Celia met her eyes.
“Because she protected both of you.”
The answer seemed impossible.
Yet the ledger, the photograph, and the careful secrecy of every adult in the room aligned around it.
Sofia had taken Norah from the danger surrounding her own birth.
At the same time, she had hidden Nico from a father who believed the boy’s identity was a possession that could be reclaimed.
The name Lucian had been placed on the records as a decoy.
Nico had become Nico Raines for a time, the child of a woman who had no reason to draw suspicion.
Norah had remained Norah Sofia Raines.
When the danger eased, Sofia had taken her daughter back.
But she had never stopped watching over the boy who had shared her protection.
“Why did she leave him with you?” Norah asked.
Celia looked at Nico.
“Because you were both children, and because she believed I could give him one thing she could not.”
“What?”
“A mother who would never stop looking for him.”
Nico turned away.
His shoulders rose and fell once.
Norah understood then that the discovery had not given him what he wanted.
It had given him another grief to carry.
His mother had been alive.
She had searched for him.
And he had spent most of his life believing she had abandoned him.
Celia reached for his hand.
He allowed her to take it, though his expression remained distant.
“I thought you were dead,” he said.
“I know.”
“I stood beside a grave.”
“It was not mine.”
“I asked Father where you were.”
“He told you I chose to leave.”
Nico’s eyes closed.
“He said you were ashamed of us.”
Celia’s face crumpled.
“I was never ashamed of you.”
He looked at her then.
The anger in him was not directed at her.
It was the pain of a boy who had waited for an explanation and received one too late.
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“I tried.”
“Not hard enough.”
“You were surrounded by your father’s men.”
“I was a child.”
“Yes.”
“So you left me there.”
“I left you alive.”
The words were gentle, but they struck with the force of truth.
Celia explained that Matteo had watched every person who approached the family.
When Sofia discovered where Nico was being kept, she realized that bringing him into the open would expose him to greater danger.
Sofia and Elias created a second identity for him, one that allowed him to remain near the Moretti family without being recognized as the missing child.