Chapter 32 - ISABELLA’S TRUE PATERNITYNo one spoke.
Isabella read the name again.
Isabella Sofia Bell.
Samuel looked at Lorenzo.
“You never told her.”
“I did not know.”
Samuel’s expression hardened.
“Sofia promised she would.”
Isabella turned toward him.
“Are you saying you are my father?”
Samuel lowered his eyes.
“Yes.”
The lighthouse seemed to tilt.
Lorenzo stood motionless.
“My mother had an affair with Samuel?”
“No,” Samuel said.
He explained that Sofia had helped Elena and Samuel create protected embryos before Elena’s twins were born. Several remained stored after the procedure.
Years later, when Sofia and Lorenzo were unable to have a child, Sofia used one of those embryos.
Without telling Lorenzo.
Isabella was genetically the full sister of Clara and Aurelia.
She had been raised as Lorenzo’s daughter.
Legally, she remained his child.
But the Bellavere charter recognized blood.
Clara whispered, “We are three sisters.”
Isabella looked at Samuel.
“Did you know about me?”
“Not until Sofia contacted me before her death.”
“And you stayed away.”
“She begged me not to destroy your relationship with Lorenzo.”
“You obeyed her because it was convenient.”
“I obeyed her because Lorenzo was your father in every way that mattered.”
Isabella faced Lorenzo.
He looked devastated.
“Did you suspect?”
“No.”
“Would it have changed anything?”
He answered immediately.
“Nothing.”
The certainty broke through her anger.
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“You are my daughter.”
Samuel did not challenge him.
The stewardship terminal requested Isabella’s consent under her Bell identity.
She had already consented as a Moretti.
Two legal identities existed around the same person.
Adrian examined the charter.
“The system cannot determine whether one person can represent two bloodlines.”
“Then the transfer fails,” Richard said.
“No,” Isabella replied. “It means the charter has reached a situation it was never designed to control.”
She placed both hands on the terminal.
“I consent as Isabella Moretti.”
The system rejected it.
She tried again.
“I consent as Isabella Bell.”
Rejected.
Evelyn studied the old interface.
“It needs reconciliation between the identities.”
“How?”
Lorenzo removed a small document from his coat.
Isabella’s original adoption acknowledgment.
Sofia had signed it after Isabella’s birth, declaring Lorenzo her legal father regardless of biological origin.
“I carried this because your mother once told me there might come a day when you questioned whether you were mine,” Lorenzo said.
Isabella read the signature.
He had known there was a secret, though not its nature.
The terminal accepted the document.
IDENTITY RECONCILED.
Isabella pressed consent.
The transfer completed.
For one moment, every screen went dark.
Then the new charter appeared.
THE BELLAVERE STEWARDSHIP TRUST.
Richard’s control ended.
Thomas’s access vanished.
H-9 began sealing.
But Thomas raised his gun toward Samuel.
“If the archive closes, everything we built disappears.”
Samuel stepped in front of his daughters.
Thomas fired.
May you like
Lorenzo moved first.
The bullet struck him in the chest.
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