Behind the study door, Adrian stood motionless.
His hands were still clenched tightly at his sides. He had never intended to eavesdrop on his father’s conversation, but several words drifting from inside the room made his steps feel as though they were being held back by something invisible.
And now, one final sentence kept echoing in his mind.
I’ll come back. Wait for me.
Adrian slowly raised his head. His gaze grew colder.
So his father hadn’t known Mariana for only two weeks.
There was a past between them.
A past Gabriel had never once told him about.
Adrian took a step back when he heard a chair scrape inside. He didn’t want to be caught there. But before he could leave, the study door opened.
Mariana stood directly in front of him.
The woman was startled.
She was still clutching the old photograph Gabriel had shown her. Her face looked pale, and her eyes were slightly sorrowful, as though she had just held back too many emotions all at once.
Adrian looked at the photograph.
Only for a fraction of a second.
But that was enough.
He saw Gabriel, much younger than he was now. He saw Mariana. And he saw a tiny baby in the woman’s arms.
Something about the photograph brought his thoughts to a halt.
Adrian looked back at Mariana.
All this time, he had assumed the woman had come to the mansion merely as a worker. Two weeks. No more.
It turned out there was something he didn’t know.
Mariana tried to walk past him, but Adrian’s voice stopped her.
“That photograph.”
Mariana stopped.
Adrian pointed to the item still in her hand.
“Where did you get it?”
Mariana stared at him for a moment before quietly answering that Gabriel had given it to her.
That answer only made Adrian more uncomfortable.
He didn’t respond right away. His gaze shifted back to the photograph, then to Mariana’s face.
“So you two really do know each other.”
Mariana shook her head.
“It’s not what you think.”
Adrian let out a short, humorless laugh.
“The problem is, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to think.”
Mariana fell silent.
Adrian stepped closer. He wasn’t threatening her, but the look in his eyes made the air in the hallway feel heavier.
“Two weeks ago, you came to this house as a stranger. Today I found out that my father knew you long before I did. He wants to marry you in just one week, while I don’t even know what actually happened between the two of you.”
Mariana gripped the photograph even tighter.
“I only just found out about all of this myself.”
Adrian studied her face.
For the first time, he saw something different in the woman he had always suspected. Her confusion was genuine. So was the pain that still remained from the past.
But the suspicion inside him did not disappear.
It only deepened.
“What happened that day?”
Mariana lowered her head.
“That’s a matter from the past.”
“And now it’s my business.”
Adrian’s voice was cold.
Mariana didn’t answer.
She knew there was no point arguing.
At last, she walked past Adrian, leaving the hallway with slightly unsteady steps.
Adrian watched her back until she disappeared at the end of the stairs.
Something was wrong.
He could feel it.
And this time, he had no intention of waiting for an answer from Gabriel.
Night began to fall when Adrian arrived at his study.
The suit he had been wearing since morning had already been thrown over the back of a chair. He sat at the desk with his laptop open, but not a single company report could hold his attention.
His thoughts were still fixed on the photograph.
A baby.
Mariana.
Gabriel.
And a promise that was years old.
His phone vibrated.
A message from the man he had assigned to investigate Mariana that afternoon came in.
[The initial data has been found. There’s something you need to see in person.]
Adrian immediately stood.
A few minutes later, a file was sent to him.
He opened it.
The first document contained Mariana Hayes’s basic information: her address, employment history, education, and details about Liliana.
There was nothing suspicious.
It was too clean.
Adrian scrolled down.
The next document was an old hospital record.
He almost skipped past it until his eyes caught a date.
May 17.
Adrian stopped.
Liliana’s birth date.
He enlarged the document.
The record came from a hospital that had changed its name several times. Some of the information was incomplete because the document was old.
But one section was still legible.
Patient’s name:
Mariana Hayes.
Adrian held his breath.
Admission date:
May 17.
Delivery date:
May 17.
Baby’s name:
Liliana Hayes.
He continued reading.
Then his eyes stopped at the very bottom.
The field that suddenly made his entire body go rigid.
Patient’s companion: Gabriel Giordano.
Adrian didn’t blink.
For several seconds, he could only stare at the screen.
Gabriel.
His father.
He had been at the hospital on the day Liliana was born.
He hadn’t merely known Mariana.
They hadn’t merely met before.
His father had been there.
Adrian stood so quickly that his chair was pushed backward.
“Why?”
The single word left his lips.
He quickly picked up his phone and called his investigator.
But before the call connected, an additional file came in.
[There’s one more piece of information, Mr. Adrian. It hasn’t been fully verified yet.]
Adrian opened it.
A scanned photograph of an old document appeared on the screen.
Gabriel’s signature was at the bottom.
And right beside it...
There was a woman’s name.
Adrian frowned.
He recognized the name.
The name he had only ever heard in stories from his father.
His late mother’s name.
Adrian’s expression changed instantly.
He read the document again.
Then again.
There was a connection between three names he had never imagined would appear together in a single document.
Gabriel Giordano.
Mariana Hayes.
And his mother.
His eyes fell back to the document on the screen.
Then slowly, for the first time since all of this began, his anger turned into something far more dangerous.
Fear.
Because perhaps all this time...
It wasn’t Mariana who had been hiding something from the Giordano family.
It was Gabriel who had kept a secret from his own son for years.
And that secret had apparently begun on the day Liliana was born.
To be continued...