Chapter 3 - The Social Worker's File
I stood up slowly.
At six-foot-two, with broad shoulders and twenty years of ruling the New York underworld carved into the posture of my spine, my presence commanded immediate, suffocating silence in any room I occupied.
Miss Vance took an involuntary half-step back, her knuckles tightening around the plastic clipboard, though her administrative resolve did not break.
"I understand who you are, Mr. Moretti," Miss Vance said, keeping her chin lifted. "The entire city knows the Moretti name. But inside this medical center, Child Protection Services operates under federal title guidelines. Five months ago, when Elena Rossi succumbed to pancreatic cancer in a charity ward in the Bronx, she refused to provide a father's name on the vital statistics registry. The children were placed in a foster intake center in Jamaica, Queens. They ran away forty-eight hours later."
Sophia shrank back into the cushions of the leather sofa, pulling the rag doll up to cover her chin.
"They had locks on the doors," Sophia whispered, her voice trembling. "They took Luca's blue blanket and gave it to another boy. They told us we were going to different houses in upstate New York. Mama said we had to stay together. She said if we got separated, nobody would remember our names."
My heart clenched with an agony so profound it felt like poison in my blood.
Elena had died in a charity ward. Alone. While I sat in penthouses on Park Avenue, managing four hundred million dollars in shipping logistics and real estate holdings.
"Look at that file, Miss Vance," I said, my baritone dropping into a register of icy, immovable granite. "Tell me the mother's full legal name."
Miss Vance opened the folder, her eyes scanning the certified death record. "Elena Maria Rossi. Born October 14, 1996, in Palermo, Sicily. Resided at 412 East 138th Street, Apartment 4B."
"Look at the bottom of the maternal intake sheet," I continued. "Under emergency contacts."
Miss Vance frowned, flipping to the carbon-copy document from the municipal charity clinic.
"There is a single handwritten line," Miss Vance read slowly, her voice losing its bureaucratic snap. "'If my children are found on the street... give them the doll named Bella. The man with the anchor will know what to do.'"
Miss Vance looked up from the paper, her gaze shifting to the gold signet ring on my left hand—the Moretti anchor—and then to the patched rag doll clutched in Sophia’s lap.
"The doll is not a legal custody order, Mr. Moretti," Miss Vance argued, though her voice lacked its earlier certainty. "Without a certified genetic profile or an amended birth certificate issued by the family court, I cannot release these children to your custody. If you attempt to remove them from this facility, I am legally obligated to notify the NYPD Domestic Bureau."
The heavy door of the suite opened.
Frank Callahan, my chief corporate counsel and the most feared appellate litigator in New York, walked into the room carrying a heavy leather briefcase stamped with the seal of the New York State Supreme Court.
Behind him walked Dr. Sarah Lin, holding a sterile plastic biohazard envelope containing two cotton buccal swabs.
"You won't be calling the police, Miss Vance," Frank Callahan said smoothly, setting his briefcase on the oak coffee table with a sharp, concussive snap. "Because forty minutes ago, Chief Surrogate Judge Evelyn Montgomery signed an emergency provisional guardianship decree, reassigning temporary physical and legal custody of Sophia and Luca Rossi to Vincent Moretti, pending genetic confirmation."
Frank pulled a certified court document bearing a raised gold seal and laid it flat in front of the social worker.
Dr. Lin stepped forward, pulling sterile gloves over her fingers.
"I have already swabbed Luca’s inner cheek in the trauma bay, Vincent," Dr. Lin said gently. "Now I need yours, and Sophia’s. The hospital's rapid polymerase chain reaction lab can deliver a twenty-four-marker paternity analysis in ninety minutes."
I knelt in front of Sophia once more.
"May the doctor touch your cheek with a cotton stick, Sophia?" I asked softly. "It won't hurt. It will just show the papers what your mother already knew."
Sophia looked at Dr. Lin, then at Frank’s gold-sealed papers, and finally into my eyes.
"Will it mean nobody can put us in the lock-house again?" she whispered.
"It means nobody on this earth will ever take you away from me again," I vowed.
Sophia opened her mouth.
Dr. Lin swiped the sterile swab against her cheek, placed it in the tube, and then turned to take mine.
May you like
"Ninety minutes, Vincent," Dr. Lin said. "Luca’s oxygen saturation is up to ninety-one percent. The antibiotics are infusing. He is sleeping, and his fever has broken to one hundred and one."
The first breath of clean air I had drawn in seven years finally entered my lungs.
