🖤 PART 2 — THE MAFIA BOSS KNEW HER NAME BEFORE THEY EVER MET

“Emma, listen to me carefully,” Dominic Moretti said through the phone. “When your driver reaches the next intersection, tell him to turn right. My men will be waiting. Do not get out of the car until they tell you it’s safe.”

My hands trembled around the phone.

“How do you know my name? Why is someone following me? And how can you possibly know I’m in danger?”

“Because someone has been looking for you for eleven years.”

The words struck me harder than the freezing wind outside.

“That’s impossible. I’m a nurse. I don’t know anyone who would—”

“Emma.” His voice softened slightly. “I believe you. But whoever is following you doesn’t care whether you understand what’s happening.”

The SUV behind us suddenly accelerated.

My driver swore and gripped the steering wheel.

“Miss, I think we’re in trouble.”

Before I could respond, Dominic spoke again.

“Keep your head down.”

A deafening crash shook the car.

The SUV had rammed our rear bumper.

I screamed as the vehicle swerved toward the curb. My driver fought to regain control, narrowly avoiding a parked truck.

Then two black sedans appeared from a side street, cutting off our pursuers.

Men in dark suits stepped out.

Within seconds, the SUV reversed violently and sped away, disappearing into the traffic.

I sat frozen, unable to stop shaking.

A familiar black sedan pulled alongside us.

Dominic stepped out.

He wasn’t wearing the faint smile I’d seen earlier. His expression was cold, his eyes fixed on the street where the SUV had vanished.

He opened my door and crouched beside me.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head.

“Good. Can you stand?”

“Yes.”

He offered his hand.

I took it.

For one brief moment, his fingers тιԍнтened around mine as if he needed to convince himself I was real.

Then he released me.

“I’m taking you somewhere safe.”

I pulled my hand back.

“No. You’re going to tell me what’s happening first.”

His guards exchanged uneasy glances.

Apparently, people didn’t often challenge Dominic Moretti.

But I had spent fourteen hours keeping strangers alive. I was exhausted, frightened, and thoroughly finished with men who expected me to follow orders without explanations.

Dominic studied me.

Then, unexpectedly, he nodded.

“Fair enough.”

He opened the rear door of his sedan.

“Get in, Emma. I’ll tell you everything I can.”

I hesitated.

“That’s what people say before they do something terrible in movies.”

For the first time that night, he almost smiled.

“Then it’s fortunate I don’t particularly enjoy movies.”

Despite everything, a nervous laugh escaped me.

And somehow, that was the moment I decided to trust him.

Not because he was powerful.

Because he had given me the choice.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at a secluded estate outside the city.

Security cameras watched every entrance. Armed guards patrolled the grounds, and the enormous iron gates closed behind us with a sound that made my stomach тιԍнтen.

Dominic led me into a quiet study.

A cup of tea appeared before me. He asked whether I wanted food, a doctor, or someone to contact my family.

No one had ever asked me so many ordinary questions in such an extraordinary situation.

When I finally sat down, he placed a thin folder on the desk.

“Eleven years ago, a woman named Catherine Reed disappeared from Chicago.”

My fingers тιԍнтened around the teacup.

“That’s my mother.”

He watched my face carefully.

“I know.”

My mother had vanished when I was twelve. The police had called it a voluntary disappearance. My father had refused to discuss her, and after he died, I found only a few old pH๏τographs and a birth certificate with a strange detail: my mother’s middle name had been crossed out and replaced in different handwriting.

I’d spent years trying to discover what happened to her.

Every lead had ended in nothing.

“How do you know my mother?” I whispered.

Dominic opened the folder.

Inside was a pH๏τograph of my mother standing beside a younger man in a dark suit.

The man was Dominic.

He looked perhaps seventeen or eighteen, his face leaner, his expression less guarded. But there was no mistaking him.

I stared at the pH๏τograph.

“You knew her?”

“She saved my life.”

His voice changed.

“Back then, I was still learning what kind of man my father expected me to become. One night, I was wounded during an attack. Everyone was afraid to help me because of my last name. Your mother hid me in a hospital storage room and treated my injuries before the men hunting me could find me.”

I looked at the picture again.

“My mother was a nurse.”

“Yes. And she discovered something that powerful people were willing to kill to protect.”

“What?”

Dominic turned the next page.

A list of names filled the paper. Some belonged to politicians. Others belonged to judges, businessmen, and men whose pH๏τographs I recognized from the news.

At the bottom was a name that made my blood run cold.

Richard Moretti.

Dominic’s father.

“Your mother uncovered a secret financial network connecting my family to people who were supposed to be protecting the law,” Dominic explained. “She copied the records and hid them before she disappeared.”

“Why would anyone follow me because of something she discovered eleven years ago?”

“Because the original evidence was never recovered.”

He leaned forward.

“And three days ago, someone accessed your mother’s old medical records using your employee credentials.”

I stared at him.

“That doesn’t make sense. I haven’t even worked at St. Catherine for that long.”

“Someone used your idenтιтy to get inside the hospital archives.”

A terrible thought crept into my mind.

“Are you saying someone at the hospital is involved?”

“I’m saying we don’t yet know whom to trust.”

He closed the folder.

“There’s one more thing.”

He pulled out a small pH๏τograph.

It showed a silver locket lying on a hospital bed.

I recognized it instantly.

I’d kept that locket in my apartment for years. It was the only personal possession my mother had left behind.

Dominic watched me carefully.

“Does your mother ever tell you what was inside it?”

I shook my head.

“It’s never opened. The clasp is broken.”

He went completely still.

Then he reached inside his jacket and produced a tiny brᴀss tool.

“May I?”

I handed him the locket.

With practiced fingers, he carefully released the damaged clasp.

A hidden compartment sprang open.

Inside was a folded piece of paper, yellowed with age.

My mother’s handwriting covered the surface.

I recognized it immediately.

Emma, if you ever read this, it means they have found you.

My eyes blurred.

There is something your father never told you. The night I disappeared, I wasn’t running from the Morettis.

I stopped breathing.

I was trying to protect you from your own blood.

The paper slipped from my fingers.

Dominic caught it before it reached the floor.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

Then I whispered, “What does that mean?”

He looked at me, and for the first time since we’d met, I saw genuine uncertainty in his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

A phone vibrated on his desk.

Dominic answered without taking his gaze from the letter.

“What?”

He listened.

His expression hardened.

“Where?”

A pause.

“Don’t touch anything. I’m coming.”

He ended the call.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Someone broke into St. Catherine’s.”

My heart lurched.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No. But they didn’t steal money or medication.”

He turned the phone toward me.

The security pH๏τograph showed a figure standing outside the hospital archives, face hidden beneath a hood.

In one gloved hand was a pH๏τograph of my mother.

In the other was a handwritten message.

Dominic read it aloud.

“Tell Emma the truth about the baby in Room 17.”

My entire body went cold.

Room 17.

I knew that room.

It was an old maternity room in the hospital’s sealed east wing. I’d pᴀssed its locked door dozens of times, but no one had ever explained why it remained closed.

Then I remembered something from my first week at St. Catherine.

An elderly nurse had grabbed my wrist when she heard my surname.

She’d stared at me in horror and whispered, “You look exactly like the other one.”

I’d ᴀssumed she was confused.

Now I wasn’t so sure.

Dominic stepped toward me.

“Emma, I need you to tell me something. Were you adopted?”

“No.”

“Did your mother ever mention a twin?”

I shook my head, barely able to breathe.

“No. Why?”

Before he could answer, the study door opened.

An older man entered, pale and visibly shaken. He was Dominic’s personal physician, Dr. Samuel Hayes.

“Boss,” he said, “we found something in the hospital’s archived birth records.”

He placed a document on the desk.

Dominic scanned it.

Then he looked at me.

For the first time, the most feared man in Chicago seemed genuinely afraid of what he was about to say.

“Emma, according to these records, your mother gave birth to twin girls.”

I stared at him.

“That can’t be true.”

Dr. Hayes swallowed.

“There’s something worse. One child was discharged with Catherine Reed. The other was transferred to a private facility under the authorization of Richard Moretti.”

Dominic’s father.

The man whose name appeared on the list.

The man who had supposedly died six years ago.

I backed away from the desk.

“Why would his family take a baby from my mother?”

Dominic didn’t answer.

Because at that exact moment, his phone rang again.

The caller’s idenтιтy appeared on the screen.

PRIVATE NUMBER.

He answered.

A woman’s voice came through, trembling but unmistakably familiar.

“Dominic? It’s been a long time.”

His face turned ashen.

I watched him grip the desk.

“Catherine?”

My mother began to cry.

“Listen to me. You have to get Emma out of that house immediately.”

Dominic’s voice dropped.

“Where have you been?”

“There’s no time. They know she’s with you. And if she discovers which twin was taken that night, they’ll kill you both.”

A sharp noise sounded on the other end of the line.

My mother gasped.

Then a man’s voice replaced hers.

Calm.

Cold.

Terrifyingly familiar, though I’d never heard it before.

“Dominic Moretti,” he said. “You’ve spent your entire life protecting your family’s name.”

A pause.

“Now you have one hour to decide whether you’ll protect your empire—or the woman you were never supposed to meet.”

The call ended.

Dominic slowly lowered the phone.

I stared at him, tears streaming down my face.

“Please,” I whispered. “Tell me my mother is alive.”

He looked at me.

Then he said the one thing I never expected.

“She’s alive, Emma.”

He picked up his gun.

“And I think I know where they’re keeping her.”

🔥 PART 3 — DOMINIC WILL RISK HIS ENTIRE EMPIRE TO RESCUE EMMA’S MOTHER, BUT THE SECRET WAITING INSIDE THE ABANDONED HOSPITAL WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING. WHEN EMMA FINALLY MEETS THE TWIN SHE NEVER KNEW EXISTED, SHE’LL DISCOVER THAT ONE OF THEM WAS RAISED TO BE A VICTIM… AND THE OTHER WAS RAISED TO DESTROY THE MORETTI FAMILY FROM WITHIN.