On the Evening of My Engagement, I Saw Four Boys in the Restroom Who Wore My Childhood Face — My Hand Stopped at a Woman’s Voice

The engagement ring was still in my pocket when four six-year-old boys looked at me in the restaurant restroom and fell silent at the same time.

The expensive restaurant in Boston’s Back Bay was almost empty at six twenty in the evening. I had entered only for a few minutes to straighten my tie and wash my hands. In half an hour I was supposed to propose to Sloan Barrett in my family’s conservatory.

Everything had been planned in advance. A dark blue suit, my grandfather’s silver cufflinks, and a diamond ring placed in the inner pocket of my jacket. Everyone in Boston said that the marriage of the Morettis and the Barretts would unite the city’s two most influential families.

In reality, I did not love Sloan.

She was smart and beautiful. Exactly the kind of woman my family would have wanted beside me. To everyone, this marriage looked perfect. But I knew that their word “perfect” actually meant “profitable.”

I walked to the mirror and then saw them.

All four stood in identical dark blue sweaters and khaki trousers. All of them were dark-haired. One boy brushed his hair back, tilted his head slightly, and brought his left hand to the back of his neck.

The other three repeated his movement exactly.

I had had this gesture since childhood. Whenever I was nervous or hiding something, my fingers always slipped to the back of my neck.

The first boy looked at me.

I saw my own eyes in his eyes.

The same sharp chin. The same corner of the lips. Even that small wrinkle on the forehead which my father hated and which always appeared in my childhood photographs.

Six-year-old Dominic was looking at me from the mirror.

Coldness poured into my stomach.

“How old are you?” I barely asked.

“Six,” he answered.

“You too?”

“We are all six,” the second one said. “Mother says we were born on one day.”

My hand touched the pocket of my jacket. I felt the hard edge of the ring between my fingers.

Six years.

Exactly six years ago I had Elena. The only woman for whom I was ready to turn my back on the Moretti world. Then one morning I found her apartment empty. She had left only a small wooden box, in which there was a photograph from my childhood, and one sentence written on the back: “Never look for me again.”

I looked for her.

My father told me that Elena had chosen another man. My grandfather convinced me that finding her would bring war upon our family. I did not believe him, but I could not find her.

A woman’s voice sounded from outside the restroom.

“Boys, where are you? It is time to go.”

My breath caught.

Even after six years I knew this voice. I recognized it even at night, in dreams.

Elena.

The boys ran toward the door.

“Mother!” one of them shouted.

I froze at the mirror. I had a ring in my pocket, and behind the door stood the woman for whom I had once wanted to give up everything.

Elena’s footsteps came closer.

The door opened.

She saw me and the color drained from her face.

“Dominic…” was all she said.

“These children…” My voice broke. “Elena, who are these children?”

Four small faces looked out from behind her. The childish laughter had already disappeared from their eyes. They clung to their mother as if protecting themselves from me.

Elena picked up her bag from the floor. A small red woolen bird hung from the bag’s handle, knitted by hand for the birthday of all four boys.

“Not here,” she told me quietly. “If you want the truth, come to the rear exit in ten minutes.”

“Six years have passed, Elena.”

“I know.”

“Why did you disappear?”

Pain flashed in her eyes, but she did not answer.

At that moment my phone rang. It was Sloan.

Elena glanced at the screen and suddenly seized the boys by the hand.

“Do not answer,” she told me. “Not yet.”

“Why?”

She looked toward the door, as if she were waiting for someone to come.

Then she took a thin brown folder from her bag and held it out toward me. Water stains were visible on the corners of the folder.

“This was with me for six years. If you open it, you will not be able to go back.”

My fingers reached the edge of the folder, but at that moment the sound of heavy footsteps rang out in the corridor, and Elena gripped my arm…

Elena’s hand was cold as ice. The four boys stood by her skirt, while the footsteps in the corridor came closer.

“We have to reach the rear door,” she told me quietly.

“First tell me, are they my sons?”

Elena lowered her eyes.

“You will see for yourself.”

“I searched for you for six years!”

“And for six years I tried to keep you alive.”

Those words entered my heart like a knife. The boys understood nothing, but the oldest, Niko, looked toward me.

“Mother, is this the man from the photograph?”

Elena’s face changed.

“Which photograph?”

Niko took a folded picture from the pocket of his sweater. I was in the picture, thirty-one years old, beside Elena. That photograph existed only in my house.

A black car stood at the rear exit. My driver, Rafael, was waiting behind its wheel.

“Mr. Moretti, your grandfather wants you to return immediately,” he said.

Elena put all four boys into the car.

“He already knows,” she whispered.

“Who?”

Elena placed the folder in my hand.

“The man who separated us.”

I got into the car. I opened the folder. On the very first sheet my name was written, and below it the birth details of four children.

At the sight of the second sheet, my breath froze.

These were not only birth certificates. Beside them lay a recording device and a short letter: “Listen where they first lied to me.”

Elena started the engine.

“Where are we going?”

“To the house where everything began.”

The car moved off. And the small device hidden in the folder suddenly switched on, and a man’s voice sounded in the cabin…

At first there was a hissing sound from the device, and then I recognized the calm, cold voice of my grandfather, Vittorio Moretti.

“If Dominic loves you, Elena, that does not mean you have the right to stay with him.”

Everyone in the car fell silent. Street lights passed alternately over Elena’s face. The boys were sleeping in the back seat, but Niko listened with his eyes open.

Elena’s crying could be heard in the recording.

“I am pregnant. I am expecting four children. Dominic must know.”

My grandfather laughed.

“Dominic will soon marry Sloan Barrett. Your children cannot interfere with this marriage if you behave correctly.”

I gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“When was this recorded?” I asked.

“On the night when you found your apartment empty,” Elena answered me. “Vittorio told me that if I stayed with you, all four children would be killed. Then he made me write that letter in your name.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

Elena smiled bitterly.

“The chief of police was on the same list as your family lawyer and the court clerk. I was alone, Dominic. I had four newborns and knew that your family owned the whole city.”

The car stopped beside an old warehouse. A small clinic stood nearby, where Elena had worked as an administrator for years. She took four envelopes from the folder.

“DNA results,” she told me. “This time no one will take this away from you.”

I opened the first sheet. Then the second. The same conclusion was written on all four: the probability of paternity was more than ninety-nine percent.

My knees gave way.

“They are my children,” I said quietly.

For the first time Elena looked at me as she had six years earlier.

“They always were.”

Niko got out of the car.

“Are you my father?” he asked me.

A lump caught in my throat as I answered.

“Yes,” I told him. “If you will allow me.”

Niko looked at me for a long time, then held out his hand. The fingers of his left hand moved toward his neck, and then I understood that it was not only a face. It was my blood.

At that moment my phone rang again. This time the number was hidden.

“Do not answer,” Elena told me.

But the call ended and a message arrived.

“If you want them to be alive in the morning, return home alone.”

Elena read the text and her face turned rigid.

Then my phone lit up once more. The second message contained an address—my family’s conservatory, where Sloan was already waiting for the engagement ring…