Chapter 3 - Two Letters, One Missing Name

I brought the envelope to Alessandro the following morning, after dropping Lily with a neighbor I trusted for a few hours. I didn't bring her into a room where men might argue about documents and family obligations. She was three. She deserved a morning filled with picture books, not a hearing about her own existence.

Alessandro met me in the smaller study beside the estate library. His father's desk remained upstairs, but this room had a plain table, two chairs, and enough daylight for me to examine every paper laid before me. Mr. Bruno brought tea and left us alone. It was a small consideration, but I was grateful he hadn't called the meeting private while stationing guards outside the open door.

I placed the old refusal in front of Alessandro. He did not touch it immediately. He read the lines once, then again. I watched his eyes settle on the signature. When he finally looked up, his face was very still.

“This is not my handwriting.”

“I thought it was,” I said. “I had nothing else to compare it with.”

“Whoever sent this wanted you to believe I'd made a decision.”

“You can see why I believed it.”

“I can.” He pushed the letter gently back toward me. “And I should have asked more questions when I saw you working here.”

The remark hurt because it was true. He had passed Lily in the corridor many times. The resemblance had troubled him, yet he had never asked me what it meant. I had interpreted his distant politeness as deliberate refusal. We had spent years standing on opposite sides of a decision neither of us understood.

I showed him the receipt from the family office. The signature was difficult to read, but a stamped date and the address were clear. Alessandro photographed it with my permission. He explained that records from the old office had been transferred to an archive when his father retired from daily administration. Access was restricted, but a receipt number could help locate the corresponding entry.

“Will he know you're looking?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then don't do it without telling me what he says.”

“I won't.”

Alessandro arranged an appointment for a parentage test through an independent medical clinic. We both received the paperwork. He left the choice of date to me and agreed that no result would be released solely to his office. I read the consent forms twice. I wasn't afraid of the biological answer. I was afraid that an answer would become an excuse for him to make decisions without me.

That afternoon, I returned to work only long enough to collect the belongings Lily and I kept by the pantry. The folded quilt still smelled faintly of clean linen. Bun's bent ears protruded from my bag. Mr. Bruno offered to carry it to the car and asked whether I needed time away from the estate. He looked tired. I suspected he had spent the previous night remembering all the things he'd witnessed without understanding them.

“I should have stood up for you sooner,” he said.

“You did warn Alessandro about Isabella.”

“I warned him with words. Yesterday I stood holding a tray.”

I could not argue with that. I also knew he had been the one person who treated Lily as a child rather than an inconvenience. Both facts could exist together.

As we reached the foyer, Bruno stopped at the walnut console table. The gold button had rolled beneath it during Isabella's outburst, and Alessandro had returned it to Lily. Now Lily had insisted on keeping it in a little cloth pouch attached to Bun's ribbon. Bruno asked to see it. I took the pouch out and set the button in his palm.

He examined the delicate raised pattern and frowned. “I have seen this work before. Not on any of Alessandro's coats.”

“Whose, then?”

“I'm not sure yet.”

He asked whether Lily would mind if he photographed the button. I agreed after explaining to him that it belonged to her now. He handed it back with care, as though the small object had suddenly acquired importance beyond the child who had discovered it.

Later that day, Alessandro called. The archived delivery register contained an entry matching my receipt. My envelope had indeed arrived. It had been redirected the same morning to the private correspondence desk used by his father, Vittorio Moretti. The log did not record what happened afterward.

I sat on the edge of my kitchen chair while he spoke. Lily was arranging her crayons by color at the other end of the table. She asked for the green one. I passed it to her before answering Alessandro. “Does your father deny it?”

“I haven't spoken to him yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need to know what I'm asking him. I won't let him explain away a document before we find the rest.”

He sounded controlled, but there was something brittle beneath his voice. Alessandro had always believed his father was difficult and demanding. He had not expected the older man to stand between him and his own possible daughter.

The next morning, we attended the clinic separately and provided the samples. It was an ordinary appointment, conducted by professionals who treated us neither as a scandal nor as a romance. I was relieved by their indifference. Alessandro waited until I came out to ask whether I had any questions about the process. When I said no, he didn't invent a reason to keep me there.

Outside, he told me Vittorio had agreed to a meeting that evening. I asked if I could attend. After a pause, Alessandro said he would prefer to speak to his father first, then share what was said with me directly. I refused. I had already lost years to private conversations conducted in my name.

“You don't get to protect me by excluding me,” I told him.

He looked away, then nodded. “Then we'll go together.”

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As I returned to my apartment, Bruno sent a photograph of a long ivory overcoat hanging in the estate's guest wardrobe. One decorative gold button was missing from its cuff. The remaining buttons matched Lily's treasure. His message identified the owner: Vincent Romano, Isabella's father. According to the guest book, Vincent hadn't been scheduled to visit the estate that week.

I looked at the picture until Lily called my name. The button she had found near the staircase wasn't proof of parentage. It was proof of something else. Someone who had no recorded reason to be in that hallway had been there before Isabella began shouting.