Chapter 21 - An Unmarked Leather Envelope Discovered In The Wine Cellar
Late one rainy November evening, while Emma was cataloging old vintage wine bottles in the deep underground cellars beneath the mansion, she noticed a loose brick wall. Behind the damp stone, tucked into a narrow iron cavity, rested a sealed black leather envelope bearing Catherine Mercer’s personal wax seal.
Emma brought the package directly up to Dominic’s private library, placing it on his desk under the warm glow of the green banker's lamp. Dominic used a brass letter opener to break his mother's thirty-year-old seal, pulling out two handwritten pages and a gold signet ring.
The letter was written in Catherine's elegant cursive handwriting, dated just months before her unexpected passing, and the opening sentence made Dominic's heart freeze:
May you like
“Dominic, my son, if you are reading this, it means you have protected Natalie from the family secrets... but you must know that Noah is not who you think he is, and his real father’s family is coming from Italy to claim him.”
Dominic slowly looked up from the paper toward the dark, rain-streaked window as a thunderclap rattled the heavy glass panes...
