“If that child is yours… then she hid it from you. She left while she was pregnant.” Andrés sets his glass down hard on the table. “You have to find her. You can’t live with this question. You’re Alejandro Ortega—you move money across continents. Are you telling me you can’t find one woman in Italy?”
Alejandro crushed his cigarette into the ashtray.
He was right.
He wouldn’t sit back and let fate decide.
For the next forty-eight hours, he barely slept. He hired investigators, called old contacts, and traced every possible lead. He remembered Lucía mentioning that her family came from a small town in northern Italy near Milan—a place she spoke about with quiet nostalgia during happier days.
He drove north in his sports car.
The road stretched ahead like a gray ribbon beneath a heavy sky, reflecting the storm inside his chest. Anxiety gnawed at him. Why did she leave? Why hide a child from him? Anger tangled with fear—fear that it was true, and fear that it wasn’t.
By the time he reached the town, evening had fallen, painting the rooftops in shades of orange. He asked in every shop, showing an old photo on his phone that he carried like a painful relic.
No one recognized her.
Until a waitress in a small family restaurant frowned at the picture.
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