I Raised The Mafia Boss’s Secret Daughter For Five Years—Until He Caught Her At The Airport / Chapter 94 / 95

Chapter 94 - Blood of the Vipers

The realization felt like poison and fire pouring through my veins all at once.

I stared at the screen, my hands trembling so violently that the mouse clattered against the stone altar.

"Elena?" Mateo stood up, abandoning his rifle on the steps. He hurried over to the altar, looking over my shoulder at the illuminated text.

His eyes widened in shock as he read the names, then slowly shifted his gaze to my face. The resemblance—the dark hair, the sharp jawline, the distinct hazel-green eyes that both Vincent and Julian possessed—had been hiding in plain sight.

"My God..." Mateo whispered, stepping back as if burned. "You're... you're Isabella's firstborn."

"They knew," I whispered, bile rising in my throat. "Vincent knew. Julian knew."

"No," a weak, rough voice rasped from the cot.

I spun around.

Vincent was awake. He was struggling to prop himself up on one elbow, his fevered eyes wide with a desperate, agonizing clarity.

"Vincent," I said, my voice shaking with fury. I marched over to the cot, towering over him. "You lied to me! For five years, I lived in fear, thinking I was just a surrogate caregiver caught in a mob war! You brought Maya to me because you knew! You knew who I was!"

"Julian knew," Vincent coughed, clutching his chest. "Julian found you in Boston six years ago. He ran the genetic match through an ancestry database when he was designing the offshore lock. That's why he placed Maya with you!"

"Why?" I cried, tears of rage spilling over my cheeks. "Why me?"

"Because Julian needed the child raised by someone carrying the identical mitochondrial signature!" Vincent rasped, reaching out with a trembling hand, grabbing the hem of my shirt. "Julian wanted Maya's immune system, her gut flora, her cellular biology to develop in the exact same epigenetic environment as our mother's line! He was cultivating her like a laboratory specimen! And he placed her with you because he knew you would protect her with your life—because instinctively, she was your blood!"

"And you?" I demanded, yanking my shirt from his grasp. "What was your part in this, Vincent? Did you come to the airport to rescue your sister, or to secure your share of the four billion euros?"

Vincent looked up at me, his gaze hollowed by an unbearable weight of grief and guilt.

"I didn't know you were my sister until three days before I intercepted you in Milan," he whispered. "I found Mother's private diary in the villa vault after Lorenzo had his stroke. Mother wrote about the baby girl Lorenzo stole from her arms. She wrote your name: Elena."

He coughed, a thin line of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"I didn't go to the airport for the money, Elena. I went because I spent my entire life watching our father and Julian destroy everything good in this family. When I found out I had a sister... and that Julian had turned your life into a living weapon... I swore to God I would tear the De Marco name to the ground to keep you safe."

I stared down at him, my chest heaving, the anger warring violently with the raw, undeniable truth in his broken voice.

Suddenly, Maya stirred on the bench, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "Mommy? Why are you yelling?"