Chapter 4 - Mia’s Last Promise
Mia sat at the dining table wrapped in one of Mrs. Harlow’s wool coats.
She refused food.
She refused sleep.
She watched every door as though expecting her father to appear and accuse her of betrayal.
“You said the baby is your brother,” I told her.
She nodded.
“Who told you?”
“My grandmother.”
Mrs. Harlow looked confused.
“I am your grandmother.”
“The other one.”
Mia described a woman named Rose who raised her inside a small apartment near the freight yards. Rose never allowed photographs and moved whenever unfamiliar cars appeared.
Three months earlier, Rose became ill.
Before entering the hospital, she told Mia that a baby would soon be born and that Mia must protect him if anything went wrong.
“Did she say who the parents were?”
“She said my father chose them.”
“Where is Rose now?”
“The hospital took her.”
“Which hospital?”
Mia did not know.
She had slept in the abandoned warehouse after Rose disappeared. Food ran out. She began searching near my estate because Rose once warned her never to approach the iron gates unless she saw a baby in danger.
The instructions had been prepared years earlier.
Mia did not accidentally find the newborn.
Someone expected her to carry him to me.
Victor brought security footage from outside the estate.
At 11:31 p.m., a woman in a dark coat placed the baby beside the dumpsters.
At 11:33, she crossed the road and entered a parked van.
At 11:36, Mia emerged from the trees.
The timing was too precise.
The woman knew where Mia waited.
We enlarged the image.
She had Evelyn’s face.
Older.
Thinner.
But alive.
Mrs. Harlow watched without speaking.
The camera showed another figure inside the van.
A man.
His left arm appeared badly scarred.
Luca had suffered burns along his left side during the warehouse explosion.
Mia moved close to the screen.
“That is my father.”
My brother was alive.
He had been inside my territory, watching his daughter carry a newborn through freezing rain, and he had not come to the door.
Anger rose inside me so quickly that Victor stepped back.
Twelve years of grief transformed into something sharper.
Luca had allowed me to believe I buried him.
He had allowed Mrs. Harlow to bury Clara without knowing she lived nine days.
He had raised his daughter to fear me.
And now he used a newborn as bait.
My phone rang again.
This time Luca spoke.
“Hello, brother.”
His voice was rough, damaged, but unmistakable.
“Where is the child?”
“With Evelyn.”
“Why?”
“To keep him alive.”
“From whom?”
“From you.”
I closed my eyes.
“You should know better.”
“I knew you before Father died. Afterward, you became him.”
“You disappeared before I became anything.”
“I watched.”
“From the shadows while your daughter starved?”
Silence.
Mia heard every word.
Her face changed when I mentioned hunger.
Luca had not known.
“Where is Rose?” I asked.
Another pause.
“Dead.”
Mia stood.
“No.”
Luca continued.
“She died two weeks ago.”
The child ran toward the phone.
“You said Grandma was getting better.”
My brother said nothing.
“You lied.”
“Mia, listen to me.”
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
“You left me alone.”
“I had to protect the baby.”
“Who protected me?”
Luca could not answer.
Mia placed both hands over her face.
Mrs. Harlow pulled her into an embrace. This time, the girl did not resist.
I told Luca I would come to the warehouse without police.
He laughed.
“You do not use police.”
“I will bring no guards.”
“Bring Mia.”
“No.”
“She knows the route inside.”
“If you need a seven year old to survive meeting me, you are no longer my brother.”
His voice hardened.
“Evelyn will kill the baby if Mia is not there.”
Mia looked up.
“She would not.”
“You do not know Evelyn,” I said.
“Yes, I do. She gave me the black bag.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Mia had seen Evelyn before that night.
Months earlier, Evelyn visited Rose’s apartment. She carried medicine and argued with Luca in the hallway.
Mia heard them discussing the baby.
Evelyn said the child was the last key to something hidden beneath my mansion.
Not an heir.
A key.
Mrs. Harlow remembered an old DeLuca tradition.
My father kept sealed family records inside a biometric vault. The lock required blood from a direct descendant born after his death.
No such descendant existed.
Until now.
I looked at the infant’s medical records again.
The mother’s name had been removed.
The father’s sample number belonged to me.
But Evelyn had warned that the paternity test would lie.
The child may not have been created from my sample.
He may have been created from Luca’s.
If so, Mia was right.
The newborn was her brother.
The mansion lights went out.
Emergency power failed one second later.
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From somewhere beneath the floor came the sound of a heavy lock opening.
Continue to the next part: The newborn’s blood opens a hidden DeLuca vault beneath the mansion while the child is still in Evelyn’s hands.
