The dining room of Victor Romano’s New Jersey mansion was a cathedral of excess—golden chandeliers, imported Italian marble, gothic windows draped in velvet curtains. Everything screamed power.
Sophia sat silently at the center of it all.
She had been adopted—or so everyone believed.
Victor’s wife, Margaret Romano, had been unable to have children. Years earlier, Victor had presented Sophia as a “miracle adoption” from a distant orphanage. Margaret, desperate to be a mother, had accepted without questions. She loved Sophia deeply… until her death two years ago.
What no one knew—
was that Sophia had been stolen.
After the outburst at dinner, Elena was dragged into a basement room. Victor confronted her.
“Who are you to my daughter?” he demanded.
Elena broke.
Seven years earlier, she had worked in the mansion as a housemaid. Young. Naive. Powerless. Victor had noticed her.
One night, he took what he wanted.
She became pregnant. Terrified and alone, she fled before anyone noticed. She gave birth in a small town in Pennsylvania, naming her baby Sophia.
One month later, Victor’s men came.
They told her the baby was sick. That she needed to go to a hospital.
She never saw her again.