Chapter 32 - The Ghost from the PastI stared at the parchment, the words burning into my retinas. The true heir of the old world is coming home.
"What does that even mean?" I asked, looking up at Dante, my mind racing through every hidden secret, every buried file from my mother's past. "My mother told me we were the only ones left. My aunt, my mother, me... we were the last branch of that family tree."
"Your mother survived a war, Mara. People in hiding often rewrite history to keep their children safe," Dante said, his jaw tightening as he stared at the letter. "My uncle Vincent and your mother both kept records. There might be something in the lower vault that prefigures this."
"Let's go down," I said, standing up immediately.
The subterranean vault beneath the Moretti estate was built into solid rock, climate-controlled to preserve documents dating back half a century. Rows of steel shelving held the history of an entire empire—its victories, its betrayals, and its darkest secrets.
Dante unlocked the reinforced security cabinet at the back of the vault. He pulled out a heavy, iron-bound ledger labeled 1994 – Internal Affairs & Bloodlines.
He flipped through brittle, yellowed pages until his finger stopped on a specific entry. My eyes locked onto the page.
There, attached to a birth certificate, was a photograph of twin babies.
"Your mother wasn't an only child," Dante read aloud, his voice strained. "She and Elena were twins. But according to these records... there was a third child born six years later. A girl taken during the purge of '94, presumed lost in the orphanage fires across the border."
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My breath hitched. "A sister? I have another sister?"
"If this ledger is correct," Dante murmured, his dark eyes darkening with intense realization, "then the Ouroboros didn't send that letter as a threat. They sent it as an introduction."
