Chapter 23 - The Stitch in the Seam
Using a fine-tipped stylus, I digitally peeled back the scanned layers of the binding fabric. Hidden between the leather cover and the final page was a microscopic microfiche strip—a format from the late nineties that hadn't been touched in decades. I grabbed the portable microfiche scanner from my emergency toolkit, slotted the strip into the lens, and watched the enlarged image project onto my tablet screen.
It wasn't financial data. It was a birth certificate and a sealed adoption decree dated six months before my mother's fatal car accident.
The name on the birth certificate wasn't mine. It was a boy's name—Julian Romano.
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My hands began to shake as the pieces violently collided in my mind. Julian Romano. Dante’s older brother, who had supposedly died in a private yacht explosion off the coast of Monaco twenty-five years ago. My mother hadn't just been an employee of Doyle Meridian; she had been the legal guardian hiding Vincenzo Romano’s true heir to protect him from the very syndicate that now controlled Blackwood Securities.
The front door downstairs slammed open with a deafening crash.
