Chapter 3 - The Cousin in the Shadows
“That photograph is a forgery,” I said.
My voice was dead level, but inside, a rage was igniting that threatened to tear down the building.
Elena didn’t flinch.
“That photograph was sent from your phone, Matteo. Along with two voice memos telling me to take whatever money I had saved and find an abortion clinic outside the city.”
The blood roared in my ears.
“Voice memos?”
“Your voice,” she whispered. “Every cadence. Every cold, dismissive cadence.”
I reached out and pressed play on the audio file on the cracked screen.
The voice that emerged from the tiny speaker was mine.
The pitch.
The slight gravel on the lower consonants.
The rhythm of speech.
“Take the money and disappear, Elena. Don't call the office. Don't be pathetic. We're done.”
Sophie looked up from the sofa at the sound of the recording, her gray eyes widening in confusion as she looked between me and the phone.
I felt a sickening chill run through my veins.
Six years ago, voice synthesis and deep-fake technology were rudimentary to the public.
To high-level corporate intelligence firms and private security contractors, they were already weapons of choice.
Someone hadn't just intercepted us.
They had manufactured a total psychological assassination.
“I sent forty-three messages after that,” Elena said, her voice dropping into an eerie monotone.
“I begged you to just look at the ultrasound. Just once. I didn't want your money. I didn't want a ring. I wanted my child to have a father.”
“Elena, listen to me—”
“I called until your number was disconnected on Sunday morning.”
My number had never been disconnected.
Except for that one weekend in Geneva when Nico told me our private family server had experienced a catastrophic malware attack.
Nico had personally taken my device to ‘wipe’ the spyware.
He had held my phone for forty-eight hours.
“Then I went to Caruso Holdings,” Elena continued.
The air in the room seemed to vanish.
“You went to the tower?”
“I waited in the lobby for two hours. Pregnant. Morning sickness making me dizzy. Crying. Humiliating myself in front of security guards and secretaries who sneered at me.”
I looked at Sal.
Sal’s face was dead white.
He had run my security detail for a decade.
If Elena had set foot in that lobby, protocol dictated that he be notified within thirty seconds.
“Who greeted you, Elena?” I asked, every muscle in my jaw aching from tension.
“Did anyone speak to you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A young man came downstairs. Said he was your personal representative. Said he was your cousin.”
The floor felt as though it were tilting beneath my boots.
“Nico,” I breathed.
Elena nodded slowly, her fingers curling into tight fists.
“He took me into a private side room off the concourse. He had two security guards outside the door.”
“What did he say to you?”
Elena took a breath that rattled in her chest.
“He told me that you knew about the pregnancy. That you had laughed when he told you.”
“No—”
“He said that the Caruso family doesn't welcome bastards from cocktail lounges. He told me that if I ever tried to contact you again, or filed for child support, you would have Child Protective Services take the baby the moment it was born and lock me in an institution.”
Her tears finally spilled over, silent and scalding.
“He gave me ten thousand dollars in cash. Told me if I wasn't out of New York by Monday morning, I would wake up with nothing. Not even my freedom.”
I couldn't speak.
The monster she had been hiding from for six years wasn't some abstract villain.
It was me.
In her mind, I was the man who had paid to have her destroyed, threatened to steal her unborn baby, and sent his cousin to discard her like trash.
“Did you take the money?” I asked quietly.
“I threw it in his face,” she snapped, her pride flaring like an open flame.
“I walked out of that building with thirty-seven dollars in my purse and caught a bus to Philadelphia. I slept in a shelter for four months until I could find work washing dishes.”
She pointed toward Sophie.
“I raised her on minimum wage. I taught her to read using discarded library books. We ate rice and beans five nights a week so she could have milk and fresh fruit.”
Her voice broke into a jagged sob.
“And this morning, while I was collapsed from a fever that wouldn't break, my six-year-old baby took five dollars out of my tips jar, walked down to the train station, and asked people how to find Caruso Tower because she found an old newspaper clipping in my drawer!”
Elena took two steps toward me, her chest heaving.
“So you tell me, Matteo. Which one of us is the liar? Which one of us is the monster?”
Before I could answer, Sal’s phone vibrated violently against his hip.
He pulled it out, glanced at the encrypted screen, and his jaw slackened.
“Boss.”
I turned, my eyes burning with unshed tears and pure venom.
“What, Sal?”
“Marco’s downstairs. With three vans. And the forensic audit team.”
“Why?”
Sal hesitated, his gaze sliding from Elena to Sophie, then finally landing on me.
“He didn't just find a file on Nico, boss. He found the bank transfers.”
“Whose transfers?”
“Nico’s mother. And your father’s personal estate account.”
The apartment went deathly still.
May you like
“My father died eight years ago,” I whispered.
“I know,” Sal replied quietly. “That’s why the check was signed last Tuesday.”
