All Chapters of STOLEN BY THE DON: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Three nights had passed since Luca gave me freedom within the estate.Three nights of sleeping alone in his massive bed while he disappeared to other parts of the house, maintaining the careful distance he'd imposed after the kiss.I should have been grateful for the space, for the respite from his overwhelming presence; instead, I found myself lying awake, listening for footsteps that never came, wondering where he was and hating myself for caring.The art studio had become my refuge during the day; I painted obsessively, creating canvases filled with darkness and light, violence and beauty, trying to exorcise the complicated emotions churning inside me. Tonight, exhaustion finally claimed me around midnight; I fell into deep sleep, the kind that comes after days of emotional turmoil, heavy and dreamless.Until a sound woke me.At first, I thought I'd imagined it - a distant cry, muffled and distorted but then it came again, louder this time, unmistakably real.Someone was screaming

Matteo sat in his private office three blocks from the estate, surrounded by files and photographs spread across his desk like pieces of a puzzle that refused to fit together properly. He'd been digging for weeks now, following threads that seemed to lead nowhere, chasing ghosts through records that had been deliberately obscured.The more he uncovered about Sienna DeLuca, the more questions emerged and the more concerned he became about what Luca was walking into.His phone buzzed; he glanced at the screen, seeing a message from one of his contacts in social services.Found something. You're not going to like it.Matteo's jaw tightened, he'd learned long ago that when his contacts said he wouldn't like something, it usually meant the situation was far worse than anticipated.Twenty minutes later, Elena Russo walked into his office, a worn folder tucked under her arm. She'd worked in Naples' child welfare system for thirty years, had seen every kind of tragedy the city could produce.

Luca arrived at Matteo's office in fifteen minutes, driving himself instead of waiting for his usual driver; something in his oldest friend's tone had set off alarm bells, had made the twenty-minute wait feel impossible. He took the stairs two at a time, bypassing the elevator, his mind racing through possibilities; what could Matteo have found that required an in-person conversation? What truth was so devastating it couldn't be shared over a secure phone line? Luca did as instructed, noting the careful way Matteo had organized everything, as if preparing for a presentation that would require evidence, proof of claims too extraordinary to believe without documentation. "Just tell me," Luca said, his patience already frayed. "Whatever you found, whatever the truth is—I need to know." "The woman you have at the estate—Sienna—she's not who you thought she was," Matteo began carefully. "But the truth is far more complicated than a simple case of mistaken identity." He pushed forw

Luca drove back to the estate in silence, the weight of Matteo's revelations pressing down on him like a physical force; the files sat on the passenger seat, containing truths that would shatter Sienna's world—and possibly whatever fragile connection had begun to develop between them.Twin sisters, separated at birth, living parallel lives without knowing the other existed; one raised in wealth and privilege, the other surviving hell in the foster system—and he'd kidnapped the wrong one while searching for a ghost.By the time he pulled through the gates, darkness had fallen completely; the estate was lit from within, warm light spilling from windows that somehow made the place look less like a prison and more like a home.He sat in the car for several minutes, staring at the files, trying to find the right words to explain the unexplainable; how did you tell someone their entire understanding of themselves was incomplete, that there was an identical stranger living a completely diffe

Luca didn't sleep that night; he paced his study until dawn, the files spread across his desk like evidence at a trial, photographs of two identical faces staring up at him—one shaped by privilege, one carved by survival. The scar on Sienna's wrist haunted him; such a small mark, barely visible unless you knew to look for it, but it carried the weight of a desperate twelve-year-old's attempt to escape pain the only way she thought possible. Serena wouldn't have that scar; Serena Marchesi, raised in wealth and comfort, would have unmarked skin, unblemished by the kind of desperation that drove children to such dark choices. It was proof, undeniable and devastating, that the woman he'd been holding wasn't the girl from his idealized memories; but more than that, it was proof that she'd survived horrors his privileged Serena would never have faced. As sunrise painted the sky in shades of gold and crimson, Luca made a decision; he needed to confront this properly, needed to hear f