Chapter 5 - The Blood Group That Could Not Lie
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The heavy mahogany double doors of the grand dining hall swung open with a resounding bang that echoed across the vaulted ceilings like a clap of thunder.
Inside, the forty guests had grown restless. Senator Gallagher was standing near the fireplace, his face flushed with bourbon and impatience, checking his gold pocket watch. Several women were whispering in hushed, nervous tones behind their silk napkins. The waiters stood along the walls like statues, terrified to move under the cold scrutiny of the four armed guards stationed at the exits.
Then, Luca Moretti stepped into the room.
His white shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, stained with rain and soot from the conservatory basement. His dark hair was wild, his eyes burning with a lethal, absolute authority that immediately commanded the room.
Beside him, two guards dragged Vanessa Bellini into the light of the crystal chandeliers.
A collective shriek tore through the dining room. Three women leaped out of their chairs, knocking over wine glasses and silver cutlery.
Vanessa looked like an apparition dragged from a nightmare. Her twelve-thousand-dollar crimson Dior gown was torn across the bodice, the hem dragging through dirt and filth. Her face was swollen, blood trickling from her split lip, her mascara running in black streaks down her cheeks. She was barefoot, having lost her designer heels in the mud outside, and she trembled so violently she could barely keep her feet under her.
“Good God Almighty!” Senator Gallagher shouted, his hands flying to his chest. “Moretti! What is the meaning of this barbarism?! What have you done to your fiancée?!”
Luca walked slowly toward the head of the table. He did not look at the senator. He picked up a crystal water carafe from the silver tray, poured himself half a glass, and drank it slowly, deliberately, letting the silence stretch until the tension in the room was ready to snap like a steel cable.
He set the glass down with a soft, ominous click.
“My fiancée,” Luca said, his voice rolling smoothly across the frozen hall, “has an announcement to make regarding the dessert course.”
He nodded toward Marco.
Marco shoved Vanessa forward. She stumbled, catching herself against the back of Senator Gallagher’s chair. The older politician recoiled in disgust, wrinkling his nose at the unmistakable stench of urine and damp earth clinging to her clothes.
“Tell them, Vanessa,” Luca said softly from behind her. “Tell the senator what you have been doing with the Moretti family funds for the past three years.”
Vanessa clutched the back of the chair, her knuckles white, her gaze fixed on the mahogany table runner. “I... I cannot...”
Luca took a single step toward her. The sound of his leather boot striking the parquet floor sounded like the cocking of a rifle.
Vanessa flinched violently, tears bursting from her eyes.
“I lied!” she screamed, her voice cracking across the crystal chandeliers, echoing into every corner of the vast estate. “I lied about the baby! I lied about the fire! I was never pregnant with Luca’s child!”
Gasps of horror and disbelief erupted down the length of the table. Senator Gallagher’s mouth fell open, his eyes bulging. “What?! Vanessa, what madness are you babbling about?!”
“Three years ago, I bribed the night staff at Mercy Memorial Hospital!” she shrieked, hysteria taking complete control of her mind. “I paid them to steal a newborn baby girl from the intensive care unit! A child born to a delivery driver and a maid! I took the child and hid her in Switzerland so Luca would believe he had an heir! I bought the child with his money! And I gave the mother an urn full of ash from a veterinary incinerator!”
The dining hall fell into an absolute, petrified silence.
The socialites, the judges, the corrupt politicians who had spent their entire lives maneuvering through the ruthless corridors of Chicago power—all of them sat frozen, staring at Vanessa Bellini with unmasked, visceral horror. Even in their world of violence and dirty money, what she had done was an abomination that crossed every line of human decency.
Luca looked down the length of the table. His expression was not angry; it was entirely devoid of life, like a stone statue carved outside a tomb.
“The dinner is concluded,” Luca said, his voice cutting through the silence like an executioner’s axe. “My men will escort you to your vehicles. You will not speak of what you heard tonight to the press. If a single word of this evening’s events appears in a newspaper or on a television broadcast before I return from Europe, I will consider it a personal breach of faith. And you all know how the Moretti family handles breaches of faith.”
Nobody asked for their coats. Nobody finished their wine.
Within four minutes, the forty wealthy guests were filing out through the front portico in terrified, hurried silence, their luxury sedans speeding away down the rain-soaked drive like panicked insects fleeing a collapsing nest.
I stood by the service entrance, still holding the gray stuffed rabbit against my chest, my winter coat pulled tight against my shaking body.
Luca walked over to where I stood.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a manila envelope sealed with a red wax stamp—the medical dossier salvaged from the basement clinic.
“Rachel,” he said gently.
I looked up into his dark eyes. “Is it real? Is my baby really alive in Switzerland?”
Luca opened the envelope and slid out a glossy white document bearing the seal of the International Red Cross Medical Laboratory in Zurich, dated six months earlier.
“When Vanessa placed Sophia in that boarding facility,” Luca explained, his voice low and steady, “the Swiss authorities required a complete genetic workup and blood typing for the child’s international residency visa. Clarissa tried to forge the paperwork, but the Swiss clinic insisted on drawing blood directly from the girl.”
He pointed his finger to a line at the bottom of the page.
“Look at the blood group, Rachel.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve and squinted through my tears at the printed text:
*Patient: Sophia (Bellini/Moretti)*
*Blood Type: O-Negative.*
*Rh Factor: Negative.*
A violent sob broke from my lips.
“I am O-negative,” I wept, my hand flying to my mouth. “Daniel is O-negative. The doctors at Mercy Memorial told us our baby was one of the rarest blood types in the hospital... they told us it was a miracle we were compatible.”
Luca looked down at the document, a faint, sorrowful smile touching the corners of his lips.
“Vanessa Bellini is AB-positive,” Luca said quietly. “And I am A-positive. Scientifically, genetically, and biologically, it is impossible for two parents with our blood types to produce an O-negative child. The child living in that Swiss nursery is not a Moretti. She is not a Bellini.”
Luca reached out and gently laid his hand on top of the worn gray rabbit I was holding against my heart.
“She is a Bennett, Rachel,” Luca whispered, his voice trembling with an ancient, protective fury. “And by sunrise, her mother is going to bring her home.”
The heavy sound of running footsteps echoed from the foyer.
Marco rushed into the dining room, his face drenched with rain, his tactical radio crackling with static.
“Boss! The convoy is ready at the gate. But the hospital just called the private line again.”
My heart stopped. The world went cold. “Daniel? Is it Daniel? Did something happen to my husband?!”
Marco looked at me, and for the first time all night, a wide, genuine grin broke across his scarred, weathered face.
“The intracranial monitor pressure just dropped into the normal range, Mrs. Bennett,” Marco said, his voice booming with relief. “He woke up fully thirty seconds ago. He pulled his own oxygen mask off, grabbed the nurse by the wrist, and demanded to know if his wife had gotten her coat back from the monster in the red dress.”
I collapsed against the doorframe, crying so hard my chest ached, laughter and sobs tangling in my throat in a wild, beautiful wave of pure relief.
Luca turned to Marco, his dark eyes blazing with unstoppable purpose.
“Have two armed guards placed inside Daniel Bennett’s hospital room,” Luca ordered. “Station a tactical squad outside his floor. Nobody enters that wing without my personal fingerprint clearance.”
“Understood, boss. And Miss Bellini?” Marco asked, glancing toward the corner where Vanessa was huddled on the floor, shivering in terror.
Luca looked down at the woman he was supposed to marry in three weeks. His eyes were cold, distant, and completely empty of mercy.
“Lock her in the cold room beneath the conservatory,” Luca commanded. “Turn the heat off. Leave her with a pitcher of water and the white crib she kept in that basement for three years. Let her spend the night looking at the bed she stole from an innocent mother.”
He turned back to me, extending his broad, tattooed hand.
May you like
“Come, Rachel,” Luca Moretti said, his voice echoing like iron through the vast, quiet house. “Our private jet is waiting on the tarmac. Your daughter has been waiting for her parents for three years. Let’s go bring Sophia home.”
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