PART 2
I took Leo’s hand and walked out before my own tears betrayed me — through the lobby, into a parking lot where sunlight made everything look too normal. That’s when I saw the black sedan parked near the far gate. Tinted windows. Engine running. A driver who was watching us, not his phone.
I pulled Leo closer. The sedan rolled past slowly, paused long enough for the driver to lift a phone to his ear, then vanished into traffic. For years, fear had been a quiet roommate in my life. That morning, it became a hand around my throat.
I took Leo home by a different route, changed buses twice, checked every window and hallway. That night my phone buzzed — an unknown number, no message, just a missed call.
I did not sleep. Neither did Marello. He signed the donation papers without reading a single line, still hearing Leo say *six and a half*, still hearing me say *it is safer than the truth*, still seeing that black sedan.
By morning, his most trusted man, Dante Russo, had found the first pieces — my maiden name, cash payments, a birth certificate with the father’s line blank, and a birthday exactly five months after the night Marello had been told our pregnancy was gone.
Five months. That was the number that changed everything.
Marello showed up at my apartment door the next morning. No guards, no raised voice — but he had numbers in his eyes now, and numbers were more dangerous than anger.
“”””Leo was born five months after you disappeared,”””” he said. “”””Tell me I’m wrong.””””
I looked down the hallway at the peeling paint, at the little life I had built because I had no choice, and for the first time in six and a half years, I could not make myself lie to his face.
“”””Is he mine?”””” Marello asked, his voice shaking.
“”””Yes,”””” I whispered.
He did not move. He did not breathe. And in the silence that followed, my phone buzzed on the counter behind me with a message that would turn the truth we had just found into something far more dangerous than either of us was ready for.
Marello stared at me, the world around us fracturing. The news hit him not like a revelation, but like a violent physical blow. He reached out, his hand trembling, as if to touch my shoulder but stopped inches away, terrified that I, too, might vanish like a mirage.