Chapter 8 - THE MORETTI VAULT
I was discharged the next morning under a false name.
Luka arranged everything.
New room.
Private exit.
Unmarked vehicle.
For the first time in my life, I left a hospital carrying my newborn daughter and wondering whether someone might try to take her before we reached the street.
Ryan came with us.
Not because I forgave him.
Because Luka said Ryan knew too much to leave behind.
We drove to a private property outside Boston owned by the Moretti family.
The house looked nothing like I expected.
No armed men at the gate.
No dark fortress.
Just an old brick estate surrounded by winter trees and high stone walls.
Inside, everything changed.
Security cameras.
Reinforced doors.
Two armed guards.
A medical room.
Encrypted communication equipment.
I looked at Luka.
“You call this private security?”
He shrugged.
“My family believed in preparation.”
My mother stayed close to Grace.
Ryan stayed as far from Luka as possible.
That afternoon, Luka took us beneath the house.
A steel elevator opened into an underground vault.
Rows of secure boxes lined the walls.
My mother gave him the brass key.
He found the matching number.
Inside the box was a sealed black folder.
M-17.
My hands went numb.
There were also three envelopes.
One addressed to my mother.
One to Luka’s father.
And one to me.
I opened mine first.
My father’s handwriting covered four pages.
Elena,
If you are reading this, I failed to keep you outside the war I created.
I sat down.
Grace slept in a carrier beside me.
I kept reading.
Your illness forced me to make a choice no father should have to make.
I used an unapproved therapy because doing nothing meant losing you.
I would make that choice again.
But M-17 produced a result I did not intend.
Your repaired mitochondrial line became stable.
You are not a patient anymore.
You are the first carrier.
My eyes blurred.
Luka stood quietly behind me.
I continued.
Vale wants to patent the process.
Helix Crown wants to reproduce it.
Antonio Moretti agreed to help me remove every active sample from circulation.
If something happens to me, do not trust the Carter board.
Do not trust Helix.
And do not trust anyone who tells you M-17 belongs to them.
It belongs to no one.
Not even me.
My hands shook.
At the bottom was one final paragraph.
There is one more truth.
A truth about your birth.
I was not your biological father.
The words seemed to lift off the page.
I read them again.
Then again.
My mother made a sound behind me.
“Mom?”
She was crying.
I stood slowly.
“What does this mean?”
She looked at Luka.
Then at me.
“Michael was your father in every way that mattered.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
She wiped her face.
“Before you were born, Michael and I couldn’t conceive.”
“We used a donor.”
“Who?”
She shook her head.
“I never knew.”
“You never knew?”
“The clinic promised anonymity.”
Luka was suddenly very still.
I looked at him.
“What?”
He did not answer.
I grabbed the second envelope.
The one addressed to Antonio Moretti.
Luka opened it.
Inside was a single page.
Antonio,
You once asked why Elena survived when the earlier models failed.
I believe we finally know.
The answer was not only in my treatment.
It was in the donor.
Luka stopped reading.
Ryan moved closer.
“Keep going.”
Luka’s jaw clenched.
Then he read the final sentence aloud.
The donor was your brother, Gabriel Moretti.
I stared at him.
Luka looked at me.
May you like
And suddenly the tattooed stranger in the hospital was no stranger at all.
If the letter was true, Luka Moretti was my biological cousin.
