Chapter 7: What Gerald Foss Remembered
Gerald Foss spoke slowly, like a man choosing every word with the awareness that words, once said, could not be taken back.
I sat at the kitchen table with the phone on speaker.
Alessandro stood near the window.
Liam stayed by the counter.
Nobody moved.
"Your mother came to see Richard in the spring of the year you were born," Gerald said.
"She didn't ask for money.
She didn't ask for recognition.
She asked him to sign a single document — a private acknowledgment of paternity, witnessed and notarized, to be sealed and held by her attorney until she decided what to do with it.
She said she only wanted it to exist.
She said she wanted you to be able to know the truth someday, if you chose to."
"And he signed it," I said.
"He signed it.
I was present.
I witnessed it." A pause.
"Richard was not a bad man, Elizabeth.
He was a weak one.
He signed that document because he loved your mother and because he knew he was abandoning her, and it was the only thing he could bring himself to do.
He never intended for it to cause harm.
He simply wanted the truth to exist somewhere, even if it was sealed in an envelope."
"Then how did Marcus end up with it?"
"Your mother named Marcus as the holding attorney.
She trusted him.
They had worked together for years before she retained him." Gerald's voice tightened.
"When your mother died, Marcus contacted me.
He told me he intended to honor her instructions and deliver the letter to you on your twenty-fifth birthday.
I believed him.
I had no reason not to."
"But he didn't deliver it."
"No.
What I did not know at the time — what I only learned eighteen months ago — is that Marcus had been approached by your half-brothers.
Richard's sons from his first marriage.
Dominic and Carver Vitali."
Alessandro went very still by the window.
"They found out about the letter?" I said.
"Dominic found a reference to it in some of Richard's personal papers after the estate was settled.
He hired someone to investigate.
He traced it to Marcus." Gerald paused.
"Dominic offered Marcus a significant sum to suppress the letter and ensure you never received it.
Marcus accepted."
"How much?" Liam asked.
"Enough that Marcus retired his downtown office and bought a house in Scottsdale," Gerald said.
"He has been on Dominic Vitali's payroll for two years."
I looked at Alessandro.
His jaw was tight.
His eyes were on the floor.
"They knew about me," I said.
"Dominic has known about you for two years.
He has been managing the situation quietly.
The forged signature, the surveillance, the pressure — none of that was Marcus acting alone.
Marcus is the instrument.
Dominic is the one directing it."
"Why?" I said.
"What does my existence actually change?"
"Your father's will established a trust for any biological children he acknowledged during his lifetime.
The acknowledgment document your mother had him sign qualifies.
If it becomes part of the legal record, you are entitled to a share of the Vitali estate trust." Gerald's voice was careful.
"It is not a small share, Elizabeth."
The silence in the apartment was total.
"Dominic stands to lose a significant amount of money," Alessandro said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Gerald said.
"And Carver?"
"Carver knows.
He has not been as active in the suppression, but he has not stopped it either."
Alessandro turned away from the window.
He looked at me with an expression that was not pity — it was something harder and cleaner than pity.
It was the look of a man making a decision.
"Gerald," he said.
"Do you still have your copy of the original paternity acknowledgment?"
A pause.
"Yes," Gerald said.
"I kept it.
I told myself it was professional habit.
But I think I kept it because I knew this day would come."
"I need it," Alessandro said.
"Today."
"I'll send it within the hour." Another pause.
"Alessandro — your brothers are going to fight this."
"I know."
"Dominic will not accept this quietly.
He will use every resource he has."
"I know that too." Alessandro looked at me.
"Send the document, Gerald."
The call ended.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
The morning light had shifted while we'd been sitting there, and the apartment felt different than it had an hour ago — smaller, maybe, or just more honest.
"Your brothers," I said finally.
"My half-brothers," Alessandro said.
"There is a difference."
"They've been trying to make me disappear for two years."
"Yes."
"And now they know I'm pregnant."
"Yes." He sat down across from me.
"Which means they will move faster.
Whatever they were planning before, the pregnancy changes the timeline." He looked at me steadily.
"I need you to understand something, Elizabeth.
I am not going to let them do to you what my father did to your mother.
But I need you to trust me.
Can you do that?"
I looked at him.
At the amber eyes I had looked into across a ballroom six weeks ago, not knowing what I know now.
At the man who had come to my door at seven in the morning not because Marcus had convinced him I was a criminal, but because he hadn't believed it.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
He nodded.
"That's fair."
Then Liam's phone buzzed again.
He looked at the screen and set it face-down on the counter without reading it aloud.
May you like
"Dominic Vitali," he said.
"He's calling me directly."
