Chapter 7
Helena agreed to talk from jail.
Not from guilt.
From fear.
Dante had stopped answering her lawyer’s calls.
People like Helena confuse abandonment with injustice.
I sat across from her behind glass.
She looked smaller without diamonds.
Still cruel.
But smaller.
“Where is my car?” she asked first.
I almost smiled.
“Gone.”
Her lips trembled.
That hurt her more than charges.
Good.
I placed the paternity test against the glass.
“You knew.”
She glanced at it.
“Sofia knew too.”
“Who is Leo’s father?”
Helena leaned back.
“What do I get?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why would I tell you?”
“Because Dante is already building a story where everything was your idea.”
Her face changed.
I continued.
“He will say you abused Leo because you discovered the truth and wanted money. He will say Sofia’s crash was your jealousy.”
“I had nothing to do with that crash.”
“But Dante did?”
She looked away.
There.
A crack.
“Who is Leo’s father?” I asked again.
Helena whispered, “Matteo Russo.”
My blood went cold.
Matteo Russo was not a lover.
He was Sofia’s cousin.
A quiet accountant who died four years ago in what everyone called a boating accident.
“He cannot be.”
“He was not her lover,” Helena snapped. “Don’t be stupid. It was a clinic.”
“A clinic?”
“Sofia couldn’t carry your child. Not after the treatments. She wanted a baby connected to her family and yours through adoption rights or whatever legal nonsense she arranged.”
I stared.
“You’re saying Leo was donor conceived?”
“I’m saying Sofia made a child your family could not control.”
My mind raced.
If Leo was born through a donor, legally mine by marriage and consent, blood did not matter.
Unless someone wanted to challenge inheritance.
Unless the trust required Bellucci blood.
Unless Sofia found a way around it.
Helena smiled.
“She changed the trust, didn’t she?”
I said nothing.
Her smile widened.
“You didn’t know that either.”
I stood.
She pressed her hand to the glass.
“Carmine, Dante killed Sofia. I can prove it.”
I stopped.
“What proof?”
“Get me protection.”
I looked at her.
“You hurt my son.”
Her face hardened.
“And Dante will kill him.”
The words landed like ice.
May you like
I walked out and called Luca.
“Move Leo tonight.”
