She wore a deep green dress.
Beautiful.
Composed.
Perfect.
Exactly the woman a Moretti was expected to marry.
When I entered alone, Sloane looked at my face and immediately knew something had changed.
She walked toward me.
“Where’s the ring?”
I stopped.
My mother rose.
“Dominic?”
I ignored her.
“Sloane, we need to speak privately.”
Sloane studied me.
Then she surprised me.
“No.”
My uncle frowned.
“This is a family evening.”
Sloane took a champagne glass from a passing waiter.
“Then perhaps the family should hear it.”
I looked at her.
Interesting.
My mother approached.
“Whatever happened can wait until after the announcement.”
“No,” I said.
The quartet faltered.
My mother’s expression hardened.
“Dominic.”
“I have four sons.”
Silence.
Absolute silence.
The violinist’s bow hung suspended in midair.
My uncle Matteo stared at me.
My mother blinked once.
Sloane did not move.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Everyone else reacted.
Sloane didn’t.
I turned slowly toward her.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
Her fingers tightened around her glass.
My mother stepped between us.
“This is absurd.”
“They’re six years old.”
My uncle swore quietly.
My mother whispered, “Elena.”
There.
One word.
One name.
But enough.
I looked at her.
“You knew.”
Her face changed.
Too late.
“You knew Elena was pregnant.”
“I knew she claimed—”
I crossed the room so quickly Matteo grabbed my arm.
I shook him off.
“What did you do?”
“Dominic, lower your voice.”
“What did you do?”
My mother lifted her chin.
The great Francesca Moretti.
Widow of Antonio Moretti.
A woman who could silence rooms without raising her voice.
“I protected you.”
My vision blurred red.
“By threatening the mother of my children?”
“I never threatened her.”
“She received messages from my phone.”
“I don’t know anything about messages.”
“Carlo sent her away.”
My mother hesitated.
That hesitation destroyed something between us.
“You sent him.”
“I asked him to explain reality to her.”
“What reality?”
“That you were not going to throw away everything your father built because a twenty-six-year-old waitress became pregnant.”
Sloane closed her eyes.
I stared at my mother.
“She wasn’t a waitress.”
“At the time, she was finishing graduate school and working nights. Forgive me for simplifying.”
“You stole six years from me.”
Francesca’s face cracked.
For the first time, she looked less like a Moretti matriarch and more like an aging mother who had suddenly realized her son despised her.
“I thought there was one child.”
“There are four.”
Her lips parted.
“I didn’t know.”
My uncle Matteo finally spoke.
“Dominic, whatever mistakes were made, we can handle this privately.”
I turned on him.
“No.”
His expression tightened.
“This does not need to become public.”
“My children aren’t a scandal.”
