A Baby Crawled Out From Under My Desk Wearing My Dead Brother’s Medal—Then Her Mother Told Me Julian Caruso Was Her Father.

Gabriel stared at his late brother’s handwriting under the green desk lamp. The paper was creased, the ink smudged, but the message was undeniable.

Vincent had known about Grace before Julian died.

Gabriel closed the journal with a muted thud. He stood up, sliding the book into his inner suit pocket, and walked out into the corridor.

The third floor of the Caruso estate was silent. Two armed guards stood outside the double doors of suite 302. Gabriel swiped his master keycard and stepped inside.

Hannah was sitting on the edge of a velvet sofa, holding a bottle while Grace drank quietly, her tiny eyes heavy with sleep. The dusty-pink maid dress had been replaced by a clean cotton sweater, but Hannah still looked exhausted, her posture guarded.

"Is the room acceptable?" Gabriel asked, standing near the marble fireplace.

"It’s bigger than my entire apartment in Queens," Hannah said softly, setting the empty bottle on the side table. She burped the baby gently, resting Grace against her shoulder. "Mr. Caruso... why are you doing this? Vincent said your family’s enemies are watching."

"My brother died six months ago," Gabriel said, his eyes scanning her face. "I was told his car skidded off the icy highway in Upstate New York. Was it an accident, Hannah?"

Hannah froze. She looked down at Grace's soft curls, her lower lip trembling. "Julian called me two hours before the crash. He sounded panicked. He said he was being followed by two black SUVs with dark windows."

"Did he give you anything else?" Gabriel asked. "A document? A key?"

Hannah reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, burnt strip of black leather. "I found this in his jacket pocket when the hospital gave me his personal effects. Most of it was burned in the fire, but this piece was tucked inside his wallet."

Gabriel took the leather strip. It was the spine of an official Caruso family ledger. Etched into the remaining leather was a partial serial number: 7704-B.

Gabriel’s chest tightened. Account 7704-B was the private offshore account used exclusively by the executive council of the Caruso empire—an account managed by only two people: Gabriel himself, and Vincent Romano.

Before Gabriel could process the clue, his encrypted phone buzzed in his hand.

He answered, bringing the phone to his ear. "Speak."

"Don Gabriel," his chief security officer, Marco, reported from the basement terminal. "We ran a background check on Hannah Reed per standard protocol. Her employment records for the past seven months are clean, but her medical files from St. Jude’s Hospital contain a red flag."

"What red flag?" Gabriel asked, turning his back to Hannah.

"Her blood type is O-negative, Boss," Marco said softly. "And according to Julian's medical files from his military service, Julian was AB-positive. Mathematically, an O-negative mother and an AB-positive father cannot produce an O-negative child."

Gabriel turned around slowly, his gray-blue eyes fixing on Hannah.

"Marco," Gabriel said into the phone, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Order a private DNA panel from our family physician immediately."