I Noticed My Maid’s Son Had the Same Birthmark as Me—Then His Hospital Papers Listed Me as His Father.

The truth was peeling away layer by layer, exposing rot that ran years deep.

"Your father paid Claire to vanish," Victor said, cornering Celeste against the tall mahogany bookshelves. "Seven years ago, right after Marco died, your family was desperate to merge with the Bellandis. But I wasn't interested in marriage."

"Victor, listen to me—" Celeste pleaded, her back pressed hard against the leather-bound books.

"I spent six months grieving my brother and sleeping with the quiet maid who took care of my mother’s greenhouse," Victor continued, his voice cold and cutting. "You found out she was pregnant before I did. Didn't you?"

Celeste pressed her lips together, her breathing shallow and ragged.

"You found out Claire was carrying my child," Victor whispered. "And you knew that if I had an heir with Claire, I would never look at you. I would never marry into the Moretti family."

"She was a servant!" Celeste suddenly screamed, the mask of high-society elegance shattering completely. "She was nobody! A girl who watered roses! You are the Bellandi Don! You were supposed to marry a woman of status, a woman who could protect your empire, not some worthless maid who couldn't even defend herself!"

The confession hung in the air like poison.

Claire pulled Eli against her stomach, shielding his ears, but the boy had already heard enough. His wide eyes looked back and forth between his mother and the towering man who shared his blood.

Victor didn't raise his hand again. The disgust in his eyes was far worse than any blow.

"You stole seven years of my son's life," Victor said. "You let him grow up in tiny apartments, eating scrap food, while you wore twenty-thousand-dollar dresses on my dime."

"Victor, my father has five hundred men stationed across the borough," Celeste hissed, trying to summon whatever power she had left. "You break this engagement, and you start a war between the families."

Victor stepped so close his chest nearly touched hers. "I don't start wars, Celeste. I finish them. Mateo, take her phone and lock her in the wine cellar suite. Nobody speaks to her father until I say so."

"You can't do this to me!" Celeste screamed as two guards seized her arms, dragging her emerald gown down the corridor. Her furious cries faded into the distance.

Victor stood motionless in the library, his broad shoulders rising and falling.

Then he looked at Claire.