Chapter 14
“And who the HELL are you to object, MARCO MORETTI?”
Mrs. Bianchi spat his name like venom, each syllable a calculated reminder of his stolen identity.
“My daughter mourned your brother for two years! Endured every torture your family could devise! Whatever debt she owed this family is PAID IN FULL!”
Her voice rose to a shriek. “The only person with ANY right to object would be her husband-Alessio. But you? You’re just the brother-in-law. An outsider. Nobody. So what gives YOU the right?”
The words hit like bullets. Alessio’s carefully constructed world began to crack.
“No… you don’t understand. I AM Alessio!”
CRACK!
Thunder split the sky. The chaotic garden fell deathly silent.
Every face turned to him, mouths agape. Two hundred guests frozen in disbelief.
Did he just say… But Alessio’s dead… What the actual fuck?
Daniela’s hand fell from her belly, pregnancy pains forgotten. She grabbed his arm. “Marco… what are you saying?”
“He’s lost his mind trying to keep his sister-in-law!” “Careful, brother-the dead don’t like being impersonated!”
Mrs. Bianchi’s laugh cut like glass. “Prove it. We all saw Alessio’s body. Watched them lower his coffin.”
“This isn’t funny anymore!” “You can’t just claim to be a dead war hero!”
Alessio stood rigid, fists clenched white, face torn between desperation and resignation. Every instinct screamed to maintain the lie.
But they were taking Noemi away.
I thought I could wait until after the baby. Thought I had time. But they’re forcing my hand. I can’t lose her. Not again.
Finally, he lifted his head.
“I. Am. Alessio. Moretti.” Each word dropped like a hammer. “My brother Marco died that day. Not me.”
God forgive me. Daniela will survive. She has the baby, the Moretti name. She’ll be fine without me. But Noemi… I can’t live without
Noemí.
BOOM!
The sky opened. Rain hammered down in sheets, drumming against awnings, turning voices to static.
But Daniela heard every syllable. Her world tilted sideways. She stumbled backward, catching the table’s edge, sinking to her knees.
“Marco… tell me this is a sick joke.”
Two years of nights in his arms. His whispered devotions as he moved inside her. And now, in front of everyone…
He wasn’t her husband. He was her brother-in-law. Noemi’s husband.
“PLEASE tell me you’re joking!”
Under the harsh lights, his face seemed to shift, blur, become someone else entirely. The stranger she’d been sleeping with.
Every puzzle piece clicked into place:
His changed tastes. His obsession with his “widowed sister-in-law.” Chasing away her suitors. The way he looked through her during sex, seeing someone else. Racing to Noemi’s bedside after the fire. That drunken night in Noemi’s room…
Oh God. Marco’s dead. My husband’s been dead all along. I’ve been fucking my brother-in-law. Carrying his child.
The chandelier swayed in the storm. Daniela’s keening wail rose-the same sound Noemi had made learning of Alessio’s “death.”
Two years late, the widow’s grief finally found her.
Her eyes rolled back. She crumpled. Blood began pooling beneath her white dress.
“Jesus Christ, she’s bleeding!” “The baby! Someone call an ambulance!”
Chaos erupted anew as darkness took her. Her last conscious thought:
I should have known. Those eyes were never looking at me.
Thunder crashed. Rain pounded. And Alessio stood frozen, watching his house of cards collapse, taking two women down with him.
What have I done?
