He Chose My Copy I Became The Law Chapter 07
The night train rolled into Porto Aurelia sometime after two in the morning.
I descended onto the platform with my small suitcase trailing behind me. Damp, salt-laced night air swept over me, carrying the unmistakable scent of a little Mediterranean city by the sea.
“Valentina.”
An elderly man with silvering temples came slowly toward me from the far end of the platform, supporting himself with a walnut cane.
He was dressed in a charcoal three-piece suit, and the antique silver brooch pinned to his lapel glimmered faintly beneath the station lights.
Stopping before me, he inclined his head and placed a grave, old-fashioned kiss on the back of my hand.
“Cesare Conti.” His voice was deep and rough. “Your father was both my mentor and my brother. As for your mother… I was the one who arranged her escape from the city during the war.”
I remained motionless and gave a small nod, though my throat had constricted around an invisible obstruction.
“Mr. Conti…”
“Call me Uncle Cesare.” He lifted his gaze and examined my features with care, his aged, dark-gray eyes reddened at the rims. “You resemble him. So very much. The eyes, the brow… even that flawless composure. You are your father’s living image.”
He removed the suitcase from my grasp and handed it to the silent, black-suited bodyguard behind him. Then he motioned toward the car.
“Come. We’ll go home first. The Family has always kept up the estate where your parents once lived.”
The car eased away beneath the streetlamps, following the old city’s winding cobblestone lanes until it came to rest before the iron gates of an estate draped in ivy.
In the courtyard, an ancient olive tree spread its branches over a carved stone table and matching chairs.
Cesare explained that my mother had often sat there reviewing the ledgers when she was seven months pregnant with me.
“You were just three months old when your parents died.”
He opened the weighty oak doors. Inside, everything had been preserved exactly as it was twenty years earlier—the fireplace, the carpets, the oil portraits lining the walls—all of it immaculate.
“The war among the Six Houses had reached its bloodiest point. Your parents smuggled you out of the city in the middle of the night and entrusted you to an old fisherman they knew they could rely on. His instructions were explicit: if they failed to return, he was to leave you at the most obscure orphanage he could locate.”
An oil portrait adorned one wall.
The man depicted in it wore a dark suit, his brows sharply defined and his gaze both gentle and penetrating. Beside him stood a woman with flowing chestnut curls and a graceful smile.
“The Family has searched for you for more than twenty years,” Cesare said, lowering his voice.Â