Chapter 1 - THE FOUR BOYS AT THE FORBIDDEN TABLE
The most feared mafia boss in Chicago came home three hours early and found his housekeeper secretly feeding four identical little boys at the dining table no one had touched since his wife died. He was about to demand an explanation when one boy pointed at him and asked, “Elena, is that the man from the picture?” The spoon fell from her hand.
My name is Alejandro Moretti.
For twenty years, men across Chicago had learned to lower their voices when they said that name.
But that Tuesday afternoon, inside my own mansion, I was the one who couldn't speak.
I'd returned unexpectedly because a meeting downtown had been canceled.
No guards knew I was coming.
Neither did Elena.
I heard voices from the dining room.
Children's voices.
That alone made my hand move instinctively beneath my jacket.
Children did not enter my home.
Strangers certainly didn't.
Then I reached the doorway.
Elena, my housekeeper of eleven years, sat at the enormous mahogany table.
Around her were four little boys.
Identical.
Maybe four years old.
Brown hair. Pale skin. Simple blue shirts.
Elena carefully divided yellow rice between four porcelain plates.
“Slowly, my little birds. There's enough.”
One boy laughed.
I stopped breathing.
His nose.
His mouth.
Even the slight crooked smile.
I knew that face.
Because I'd seen it every morning of my childhood in the mirror.
I looked at the other three.
The resemblance was worse.
Four copies of the same child.
Four children who looked disturbingly like me.
My wife, Sofia, had died five years earlier.
We had never had children.
At least...
that's what I had believed.
One boy suddenly noticed me.
He stared for several seconds.
Then his entire face brightened.
“Elena!”
She looked up.
The boy pointed directly at me.
“Is that the man from the picture?”
The spoon slipped from Elena's fingers.
Clink.
Her face went white.
I stepped into the room.
“What picture?”
Nobody answered.
“Elena.”
She immediately stood and moved between me and the boys.
That frightened me more than anything else.
Elena had watched armed men enter this house.
She had seen people twice her size lose their nerve around me.
She had never once stood in my way.
Until now.
“Who are these children?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Alejandro...”
“Who. Are. They?”
The smallest boy reached into his little backpack.
Elena spun around.
“No, Mateo!”
Too late.
He pulled out an old photograph.
My chest tightened.
It was Sofia.
My dead wife.
She was smiling at the camera.
And beside her...
was Elena.
Written across the bottom in Sofia's handwriting were five words:
KEEP THEM SAFE FROM ALEJANDRO.
I looked at Elena.
Then at the four boys.
She was crying now.
“Alejandro,” she whispered, “Sofia made me promise you would never find them.”
I couldn't move.
“Why?”
Elena glanced toward the windows.
Her expression suddenly changed.
Fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of something outside.
She grabbed the four boys.
“Because Sofia wasn't protecting them from you.”
My hand went beneath my jacket.
“Then who?”
Before Elena could answer, one of my guards shouted from downstairs.
“BOSS!”
Three black SUVs had just stopped outside my gates.
Elena closed her eyes.
Then whispered the words that made my blood run cold.
“They found the boys.”
For three seconds, nobody moved.
Then the tallest of the four boys reached across the table and took his brother's hand.
“Don't cry, Mateo,” he whispered. “I'll protect you.”
He couldn't have been older than four.
Yet he said it with the exhausted seriousness of someone who had made that promise before.
I looked toward the windows.
Three SUVs stood beyond the iron gates. Their engines were running. Through the rain-speckled glass, I counted at least eight men.
My security chief, Vincent Rinaldi, appeared in the doorway.
“Boss, they claim to be federal contractors.”
“Identification?”
“Nothing I trust.”
“Then they stay outside.”
Vincent nodded.
I turned to Elena.
“Take the boys upstairs. West wing. Lock the nursery.”
She hesitated.
“Alejandro—”
“Now.”
The smallest boy began crying.
I crouched so we were eye level.
He stared at me with Sofia's dark eyes.
“What is your name?”
“Mateo.”
“Are you afraid, Mateo?”
He nodded.
I lowered my voice.
“Then go with Elena. Nobody gets near you without my permission.”
He studied me.
“Are you the bad man?”
The question struck harder than any bullet ever had.
I looked at the photograph still clutched in his hand.
Keep them safe from Alejandro.
I swallowed.
“I don't know what you've been told about me.”
Mateo wiped his nose.
“Miss Elena says bad men don't always look bad.”
I glanced at Elena.
She looked away.
“She's right,” I said.
The boy considered this.
Then he whispered, “Can you be a good man today?”
I had no answer.
Before I could find one, Vincent's radio crackled.
“Boss, there's a woman outside the gate. Says she has a court order.”
“What woman?”
Vincent checked the security monitor.
“Dr. Evelyn Cross.”
Elena made a sound like someone had punched her.
I turned.
“You know her?”
Her lips trembled.
“She's the doctor who delivered them.”
I stared at the boys.
“Delivered who?”
Elena's tears finally spilled.
“Your sons, Alejandro.”
Everything inside me stopped.
She looked at the four little faces.
“All four of them.”
Five years earlier, I had buried my wife in a closed coffin.
Now four children stood in my dining room wearing her eyes.
And the woman outside my gates had come to take them.
I reached for my phone.
“Vincent. Lock down the estate. Call our attorney and an independent physician. Preserve every security recording.”
“Understood.”
I looked at Elena.
“You're going to tell me everything.”
She nodded.
“But first, Alejandro, there's something you need to understand.”
“What?”
She stared at the photograph.
“Sofia didn't die the night you think she did.”
The room seemed to tilt.
May you like
Elena continued.
“And if Evelyn Cross gets inside this house, the truth may die with those boys.”
