Chapter 2 - THE MIRROR OF FOUR BROTHERS
The silence that followed the clatter of the spoon was absolute, suffocating, and heavy with the weight of an unraveled secret.
Alejandro did not move an inch. The breath was trapped in his throat, his broad chest rising and falling in an unnatural, rigid rhythm. His dark eyes remained fixed on the table, tracking from one small face to the next, then to the next, and finally to the fourth.
They were quadruplets. Four years old, at most.
And they were, beyond any shadow of rational doubt, his own living image.
It was like looking through a shattered glass into his own forgotten childhood. They shared the exact same wide, intelligent dark eyes, the same sharp, aristocratic nose with a slight bump at the bridge, the same stubborn, square line of the jaw, and the same dark, wavy hair that refused to stay parted. Even the cowlick near the crown of their heads curled in the exact counter-clockwise pattern that Alejandro had inherited from his grandfather. They possessed the fair, rosy complexion that Sofia had carried—a luminous, delicate skin tone that contrasted sharply with their dark hair.
Alejandro’s mind spun into a chaotic, dizzying vortex.
Four years ago, Sofia was supposed to have been resting in a private convalescent villa in Switzerland, undergoing experimental immunotherapies for the aggressive pulmonary illness that had eventually taken her life. Alejandro had visited her every two weeks, flying across the Atlantic in his private jet, sitting beside her bed, holding her fragile hands while she smiled and insisted she was growing stronger. She had never spoken of pregnancy. She had never shown a single sign of carrying life. When she had passed away three years ago in a private Geneva clinic, Alejandro had buried her in the family mausoleum, believing that the Moretti lineage had died with her—that he was doomed to walk the rest of his life as the solitary, childless guardian of a hollow empire.
Yet here, sitting at his dining table, eating yellow rice from his wife’s favorite china, were four boys who carried his soul in their eyes.
Alejandro took a slow, heavy step forward. The polished leather of his shoes pressed firmly against the hardwood, the heavy, deliberate cadence of his stride echoing off the paneled walls.
Elena scrambled backward, her hands fluttering before her chest in sheer panic. She instinctively placed herself between the long table and the towering man, her body forming a frail, trembling barrier in front of the four chairs.
“Mr. Moretti…” Elena whispered, her voice cracking, her chest heaving against the starched fabric of her white apron. “I… you weren't supposed to be home until five o'clock…”
Alejandro did not look at her yet. He stopped three paces from the table, towering over the furniture, his gaze locked onto the child who had spoken. The boy had lowered his hand, but he was still staring up at Alejandro with a calm, curious gaze, completely unbothered by the sheer physical mass and intimidating presence of the man before him.
The other three boys had stopped chewing, their little forks hovering, their dark eyes watching Alejandro with identical expressions of polite, boyish wonder.
Alejandro spoke. His voice, usually a deep, commanding baritone that could bend city councils and corporate boards to his will, was rough, strained, and trembling with a raw, subterranean tremor.
“What picture?” Alejandro asked.
May you like
Elena flinched as if struck. She swallowed hard, her throat dry, her eyes darting frantically toward the hallway behind him, as if looking for an escape route that did not exist.
“Answer me, Elena,” Alejandro commanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly register that shook the crystal glasses on the sideboard. He took another step, his shadow engulfing the corner of the mahogany table. He pointed his own large, calloused hand toward the four identical faces. “Who are these children?”
