PART 2 The mafia boss believed he could never have...

PART 2 The mafia boss believed he could never have a child—until my five-year-old son looked up from a diner booth and asked him

PART 2

“Yes.”

The word left my mouth so quietly that it should have disappeared beneath the hum of the old refrigerator.

It did not.

It seemed to strike every metal shelf in the storage room and return to us louder.

Matteo did not move.

For years, I had imagined this moment in fragments. In some versions, he was furious. In others, he looked through me as if I were a stranger. In the worst ones, he took Theo from me without raising his voice, using lawyers, money, and the Vieri name to erase me from my own son’s life.

I had never imagined him standing so still.

His face had always been difficult to read. Even when we were young, when he had loved me with a tenderness he allowed almost no one else to see, Matteo had carried silence like armor.

But this silence was different.

It was not cold.

It was wounded.

“He is yours,” I said again.

Matteo lowered his gaze.

For a moment, he looked at the floor between us, at the cracked gray tile and the faint dusting of flour near his polished shoes. His hand tightened at his side. Then loosened.

“How old?”

“Five.”

“When is his birthday?”

“October seventeenth.”

His eyes closed.

Only for a second.

But I knew him well enough to understand what had happened behind them. He was counting backward. Measuring months. Searching through memories I had tried not to revisit.

We had spent our last night together in early February, before the house had become full of locked doors, quiet conversations, and men who stopped speaking when I entered a room.

Before I found out I was pregnant.

Before I disappeared.

Matteo opened his eyes again.

“You knew before you left.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened.

Outside the storage-room door, I heard plates clatter and Rosie tell someone the kitchen was temporarily closed. Theo said something I could not make out, and an older man laughed.

The ordinary sound of it made my chest ache.

“Why?” Matteo asked.

One word. No accusation. No raised voice.

That made it worse.

I folded my arms, partly because I was cold and partly because I needed to hold myself together.

“You believed you couldn’t have children.”

“I was told I couldn’t.”

“So was I.”

His gaze sharpened. “By whom?”

“Your doctor’s report.”

“What report?”

The question was immediate.

I stared at him.

Matteo took one slow step toward me, then stopped when my shoulders pressed against the shelf.

“I never showed you any medical report,” he said.

“I found it in your study.”

“My study was locked.”

“I knew where you kept the spare key.”

A shadow of something crossed his face. It might once have been amusement. Six years ago, he would have reminded me that hiding a key behind a first edition of The Count of Monte Cristo was not particularly clever.

Now neither of us smiled.

“The report had your name on it,” I continued. “Your date of birth. The clinic you visited in Boston. It said your chances of fathering a child were practically nonexistent.”

“That is what I was told.”

“Then why are you looking at me as if you’ve never seen it?”

“Because the report I received was delivered directly to my attorney. It was never kept at home.”

The room seemed to tilt.

I gripped the shelf behind me.

Matteo noticed. He always noticed.

“What exactly did you find, Mara?”

I hated the way my real name sounded in his voice. It awakened a version of me I had spent six years burying.

“A folder,” I said. “Dark blue. No label. It was inside the bottom drawer of your desk.”

“What else was in it?”

I hesitated.

His expression changed.

Not anger. Recognition.

“There was something else,” he said.

“A note.”

“What did it say?”

I looked toward the closed door.

“Theo is right outside.”

“Then speak quietly.”

There it was—the old Matteo. Controlled, direct, accustomed to being obeyed.

But beneath it was a man who had just learned he had a son.

I drew a breath.

“It said that if I told you about the baby, our child would become a weakness people could use against you. It said there were men inside your family who would never allow an heir they couldn’t control.”

Matteo’s face went still.

“The exact words.”

“I don’t remember every word.”

“You remember.”

He was right.

I had heard those sentences in my dreams for six years.

I looked down at my hands.

“‘A son would become a crown before he learned to walk. A daughter would become a bargain before she learned to speak. Leave before Matteo knows, and the child may have a life that belongs to no one else.’”

The refrigerator clicked off.

In the sudden quiet, I heard Matteo breathe in.

“And you believed it.”

“I was twenty-four, pregnant, and alone in a house where everyone knew something I didn’t.”

“You were not alone.”

“I tried to talk to you.”

“When?”

“The night before I left.”

His eyes narrowed as he searched his memory.

“You came home after two in the morning,” I said. “Your shirt was torn. You had blood on your cuff.”

“It wasn’t mine.”

“I know that now.”

“Mara—”

“You told me to pack a bag.”

His expression shifted.

The memory had returned.

“There had been a security breach,” he said. “I wanted you out of the city for two days.”

“You wouldn’t explain. You said I should go wherever Paolo took me and not ask questions.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“That is what everyone says when they want obedience instead of trust.”

The words came out harder than I intended.

Matteo absorbed them without flinching.

I continued before I could lose my nerve.

“You took a phone call in the hallway. I heard you say, ‘If she becomes a liability, I will handle it myself.’”

His brow furrowed.

“You thought I meant you?”

“I had just discovered I was pregnant. I had found a medical report saying the baby should be impossible. Then I found a note warning me not to tell you. What was I supposed to think?”

“You were supposed to ask me.”

“I was afraid.”

The truth settled between us.

That, more than anything, finally broke through his control.

Matteo looked away.

His throat moved as he swallowed.

When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.

“The call was about a bookkeeper named Celia Hart. She had been moving money through accounts connected to my uncle. When I said I would handle it, I meant I would arrange for her to leave the city before either side decided she knew too much.”

I closed my eyes.

Six years.

Six years built on half a sentence overheard through a doorway.

Yet even now, I could not tell myself I had been foolish. Fear did not require proof. It only required enough pieces to create a believable picture.

“I went back to the study after you left the house,” I said. “The folder was gone.”

“Who was in the house that night?”

“Your security staff. Paolo. Your uncle came by around midnight.”

“My uncle Stefano?”

I nodded.

Something unreadable moved across Matteo’s face.

Stefano Vieri had been Matteo’s father’s younger brother. Soft-spoken, elegant, and always smiling as if he knew how every conversation would end before it began.

He had been one of the few people in the Vieri family who treated me kindly.

At least, I had believed he did.

“Stefano died three years ago,” Matteo said.

“I heard.”

“From whom?”

“Rosie keeps newspapers behind the counter. Sometimes your name was in them.”

“You followed what happened to my family?”

“Not closely.”

It was a lie, and he knew it.

Whenever the Vieri name appeared in print, I read every word. Engagement rumors. Business acquisitions. Charity galas. Court hearings that ended without charges. A photograph of Matteo standing beside his mother at Stefano’s funeral, his face harder and thinner than I remembered.

I had kept that newspaper for nearly a year before forcing myself to throw it away.

Matteo studied me.

“Did you ever consider coming back?”

“Every day for the first six months.”

“And after that?”

I thought of Theo’s first fever. His first tooth. His tiny hand wrapped around my finger while we slept on a mattress in a rented room above a laundromat.

“After that, I had too much to lose.”

A faint crease appeared between Matteo’s eyebrows.

“You believed I would take him from you.”

“I didn’t know what you would do.”

“You knew me.”

“I knew the man I married. I didn’t know the man everyone else seemed afraid of.”

He looked as if he wanted to answer, but a soft knock came at the door.

“Mama?” Theo called. “Rosie says the soup is getting a skin.”

My heart lurched.

“I’ll be right there, sweetheart.”

There was a pause.

“Is the eye man staying?”

Matteo’s expression changed so suddenly that I almost failed to recognize it.

The pain was still there, but something warmer moved beside it.

Hope, perhaps.

Careful and frightened.

“That depends,” I said.

“On what?”

I looked at Matteo.

“On whether he can follow rules.”

Theo considered this.

“Rosie has lots of rules.”

“Yes, she does.”

“She says rules stop people from acting foolish.”

From the other side of the door, Rosie said, “I said rules stop grown men from acting foolish.”

Theo whispered loudly, “That means him.”

For the first time, Matteo almost smiled.

It was only a slight movement at the corner of his mouth, but I remembered that smile. I remembered being twenty-two and seeing it across a crowded room, surprised that a man with such a severe face could look so young when he forgot to guard it.

“I can follow rules,” he said toward the door.

Theo replied, “Good.”

Then his footsteps moved away.

I placed my hand on the doorknob.

“Do not tell him yet.”

Matteo’s almost-smile disappeared.

“He deserves to know.”

“He deserves to know in a way that does not frighten him.”

“I would not frighten him.”

“You frighten adults without trying.”

“That is not relevant.”

“It is extremely relevant.”

His eyes met mine.

For one tense second, neither of us moved.

Then Matteo inclined his head.

“What are your rules?”

The question disarmed me.

“No questions about where we live. No promises. No gifts. No telling him you are his father until I say we’re ready.”

His jaw tightened at the last condition, but he nodded.

“And no one follows us home.”

“Mara.”

“No one.”

“I arrived alone.”

“You are never alone.”

Something flickered in his expression.

“Tonight I am.”

I opened the door.

Rosie stood three feet away with her arms crossed over her flowered apron. At sixty-eight, she was small, square-shouldered, and unimpressed by most of the human race.

She looked from me to Matteo.

“If either of you makes that little boy cry,” she said, “you’re washing dishes until Easter.”

Matteo glanced toward the kitchen.

“There appear to be several months’ worth.”

“Then behave.”

She turned and walked away before he could answer.

Matteo stared after her.

“She knows who I am?”

“Rosie knows everyone who walks through her door. She just doesn’t care.”

“That may be the most dangerous kind of person.”

Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.

It vanished almost immediately, but Matteo heard it.

His gaze settled on me with a softness I did not want.

We returned to the dining room.

Most of the customers had remembered how to move, though their attention followed us with the subtlety of theatergoers watching a final act.

Theo sat in the back booth, stirring the skin into his soup with grave concentration. His coloring book lay open beside him, filled with green clouds and a purple horse.

Matteo stopped beside the table.

Up close, the resemblance was impossible to ignore.

Theo had my chin and my dark curls, but the eyes belonged entirely to Matteo. So did the way he tilted his head when studying something unfamiliar. So did the faint line between his brows.

My son looked at the empty seat across from him.

“You can sit there,” he said.

Matteo glanced at me.

I nodded.

He slid into the booth.

I sat beside Theo, close enough that our shoulders touched.

For a few moments, nobody spoke.

Then Theo pushed the coloring book toward Matteo.

“I made the sky green because Mama says there are places where lights make the sky green at night.”

“The northern lights,” Matteo said.

Theo’s face brightened. “You know them?”

“I have seen them.”

“Where?”

“Norway.”

“Is that far?”

“Yes.”

“Farther than Queens?”

“Much farther.”

Theo considered this carefully.

“Did you go on a plane?”

“I did.”

“Was it scary?”

“No.”

“Mama says people who say they’re never scared are either pretending or not paying attention.”

Matteo looked at me.

“Your mother says many wise things.”

“She also says shoes do not belong on the couch, but I think that is just her opinion.”

Rosie coughed suspiciously from behind the counter.

Matteo leaned slightly closer to the coloring book.

“Why is the horse purple?”

“Because brown was empty.”

“A practical decision.”

“What does practical mean?”

“It means you solved a problem using what you had.”

Theo smiled.

“I’m very practical.”

“I can see that.”

Watching them together did something strange to my heart.

For five years, I had trained myself not to imagine this. I had told myself that Theo did not need what he had never known. I gave him bedtime stories, birthday pancakes, secondhand bicycles, and every answer I could manage when he asked why other children had fathers who attended school plays.

I had never allowed myself to picture Matteo listening seriously to Theo’s explanations.

I had never imagined Theo making him smile.

Rosie brought over a fresh bowl of soup and set it in front of my son.

“Eat,” she ordered gently.

Then she placed a cup of coffee in front of Matteo.

“This one’s hot.”

“The first was hot.”

“The first got cold while you stared at the boy.”

Matteo’s fingers tightened around the cup.

Rosie softened.

Only slightly.

“He likes two sugars,” she told me.

“I remember.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Matteo looked up.

Six years ago, every morning had begun with me dropping two cubes into his cup while he read the financial pages. He used to pretend not to notice when I added a third on difficult days.

I reached for the sugar bowl, then stopped.

He added the sugar himself.

Theo watched him.

“Do you have children?” he asked.

The spoon stilled in Matteo’s hand.

I touched Theo’s knee beneath the table.

“Theo—”

“It is all right,” Matteo said.

He set the spoon down.

“I recently learned that I might.”

Theo’s eyes widened.

“You don’t know?”

“I was not told.”

“That’s strange.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should ask their mother.”

Across the table, Matteo held my gaze.

“I am trying.”

I looked away first.

Theo dipped his crackers into the soup.

“Does she know?”

“She knows more than I do.”

“That happens a lot,” Theo said. “Mama knows where everything is.”

Matteo’s expression tightened with something like grief.

“Yes,” he said. “She always did.”

The bell above the diner door rang.

Every muscle in my body tensed.

A young man in a navy raincoat entered, shook water from his hair, and took a stool at the counter. He did not look at us.

Still, Matteo noticed my reaction.

His gaze moved to the windows, the door, the mirrored panel behind the pie case.

Old instincts.

Old fears.

“Are you in danger?” he asked quietly.

“No.”

“That was not a convincing answer.”

“I have spent six years looking over my shoulder. Sometimes I react before I think.”

“Has anyone approached you?”

“No.”

“Followed you?”

“No.”

“Asked about Theo?”

I hesitated.

Matteo saw it.

“When?”

“Two months ago, someone called the diner.”

“Who?”

“They did not give a name.”

“What did they ask?”

“Whether a woman named Mara worked here.”

Matteo’s face hardened.

“I told Rosie it was a wrong number,” I continued. “They never called again.”

“Male or female?”

“Male.”

“Age?”

“I don’t know. Middle-aged, maybe.”

“Accent?”

“None that I noticed.”

“I need the phone records.”

“No.”

“Mara—”

“You don’t get to take over my life because you learned the truth an hour ago.”

“I am not taking over your life. I am responding to the possibility that someone who knew you before has found you.”

His voice remained calm, but something in it changed the air around us.

Theo looked up.

“Are you arguing?”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” Matteo said at the same time.

Theo frowned.

“That means yes.”

Matteo leaned back.

“We disagree about how to solve a problem.”

“Is it a practical problem?”

Matteo’s eyes moved to mine.

“It could be.”

“Then use what you have.”

I nearly laughed again.

Matteo did not.

He looked at Theo as if the child had just said something profound.

Perhaps he had.

“What I have,” Matteo said slowly, “is time. So I can wait until your mother is ready to talk.”

Theo nodded approvingly.

“That is practical.”

Under the table, my hands unclenched.

The dinner rush faded. Customers paid their checks and left beneath black umbrellas. The rain softened to a mist, turning the streetlights beyond the windows into pale golden circles.

Rosie flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED.

Theo finished his soup, ate half a slice of apple pie, and began yawning over his coloring book.

“You can lie down in my office,” Rosie told him.

“I’m not tired.”

“You just tried to color with a spoon.”

Theo looked down at the spoon in his hand.

“I was experimenting.”

“Experiment on the couch.”

He slid out of the booth.

Before following Rosie, he stopped beside Matteo.

“You can come back tomorrow,” he said.

My breath caught.

Matteo looked at me.

I could see the restraint it cost him not to answer too quickly.

“Only if your mother agrees.”

Theo turned to me.

“Do you agree?”

“We’ll talk about it.”

“That means maybe.”

“It means we’ll talk about it.”

He sighed with the great weariness of a child burdened by unreasonable adults.

Then he followed Rosie through the kitchen.

When he was gone, the diner felt too large.

Matteo stared at the doorway long after Theo disappeared.

“He likes apple pie,” he said.

“He likes anything with cinnamon.”

“He draws with unusual colors.”

“He refuses to let empty crayons limit his artistic choices.”

“He is polite.”

“Most of the time.”

“And observant.”

“Always.”

A faint warmth entered Matteo’s eyes.

Then it faded.

“What does he know about his father?”

“That he lives far away.”

“You told him I chose not to be there?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him I was dead?”

“No.”

“What name does he use?”

“Theo Hale.”

“Hale.”

“It was my grandmother’s name.”

“And you?”

“Anna Hale.”

His mouth tightened.

“Anna.”

“It was easier to remember than something completely invented.”

“Was it easy?”

The question was not about the name.

I looked toward the rain-striped windows.

“No.”

Matteo reached inside his coat.

My body reacted before my thoughts did. I stiffened, and he stopped.

Slowly, he withdrew a slim leather wallet and placed a card on the table.

It bore only a name and a phone number.

No title. No company. No address.

“Call me when you decide what happens next,” he said.

“You mean when we decide.”

His eyes lifted.

“Yes.”

The agreement surprised me.

“I need time,” I said.

“You have had six years.”

“I had six years to build a life without you. I’ve had less than an hour to understand what happens now that you’re standing in it.”

Pain flickered across his face, but he nodded.

“One day.”

“That is not enough.”

“Two.”

“Matteo.”

“I will not remain absent from my son’s life indefinitely.”

The words were firm, but not threatening.

He was not asking me to pretend he had no rights, no feelings, no claim to the child whose eyes mirrored his own.

“Three days,” I said. “No visits. No calls unless there is an emergency. On Sunday, we meet somewhere public and talk.”

“Here?”

“No. Somewhere Theo won’t overhear.”

“Agreed.”

He slid out of the booth.

For the first time, I noticed how tired he looked. Not weak. Matteo had never seemed weak a day in his life. But there were shadows beneath his eyes and silver at his temples that had not been there when I left.

He buttoned his coat.

“Does he have everything he needs?”

The question was so ordinary that it hurt.

“Yes.”

“School?”

“Kindergarten. He loves reading and hates nap time.”

“Health?”

“Good. He had asthma when he was younger, but he mostly outgrew it.”

Matteo absorbed each fact as if placing it somewhere permanent.

“Has he ever been hospitalized?”

“Once, when he was two.”

His face tightened.

“It was one night. He recovered quickly.”

“I should have been there.”

“You didn’t know.”

“You made sure I didn’t know.”

The sharpness returned.

I rose from the booth.

“I know what I did.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“I buried you,” he said.

The diner seemed to fall silent again.

“What?”

“Not literally. There was no body.”

I stared at him.

“Four months after you disappeared, your car was found near the Hudson. Your purse was inside. There was blood on the passenger seat.”

My knees weakened.

“I left the car at a train station.”

“It was moved.”

“I never knew.”

“The police decided you had either entered the river or staged your disappearance. I chose to believe the second possibility.”

“Why?”

“Because I searched every morgue between New York and the Canadian border, and none of them had you.”

His voice remained steady, but his eyes did not.

“I hired investigators. I checked hospitals, shelters, airports, bank accounts, every person you had known before me. There was nothing.”

“I used cash.”

“I know that now.”

“You thought I was dead.”

“Some days.”

I pressed a hand to my mouth.

I had imagined his anger.

I had never imagined him searching morgues.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

His expression did not soften.

“I do not know what to do with that yet.”

“That’s fair.”

“No,” he said. “None of this is fair.”

The bell above the front door shifted as wind pressed against it.

Matteo turned toward the sound.

Then he looked at the empty booth where he had been sitting when Theo first approached him.

His untouched first cup of coffee remained there.

Beside it lay a cream-colored envelope.

I had not noticed it before.

Neither, apparently, had he.

Matteo crossed the room and picked it up.

His name was printed on the front in neat black letters.

Not handwritten.

Typed.

“Was that there when you arrived?” I asked.

“No.”

Rosie emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel.

“What is it?”

“Did anyone come near this table while we were in the back?” Matteo asked.

“Half the diner came near it. We were busy.”

“Did anyone leave an envelope?”

“Not that I saw.”

Matteo examined the seal.

“Do not open it,” I said.

He looked at me.

“It may be nothing.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No.”

Rosie moved toward the telephone behind the counter.

“I can call the police.”

Matteo’s eyes remained on the envelope.

“Not yet.”

He slid one finger beneath the flap.

Inside was a single sheet of paper and a small velvet pouch.

He unfolded the page first.

I watched his face as he read.

“What does it say?”

He did not answer.

“Matteo.”

He placed the paper on the table.

Three lines had been typed in the center.

You were both told a lie.

The child was never the danger.

The danger was what his birth would prove.

My skin turned cold.

Rosie read over my shoulder.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

But Matteo was looking at the velvet pouch.

He loosened the drawstring and tipped its contents into his palm.

A gold ring flashed beneath the diner lights.

My wedding ring.

For several seconds, I could not speak.

Matteo stared at it, then at me.

“You left this on the dresser,” he said.

“No.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I left it in a safe-deposit box in Albany.”

The room seemed to contract around us.

“When?” he asked.

“The week after I ran.”

“Who knew?”

“No one.”

“That is impossible.”

“I rented the box under Anna Hale. I never returned to it. I thought the ring was still there.”

Matteo turned the ring slowly between his fingers.

There was a tiny scratch beside the setting where I had once caught it on the latch of our bedroom window.

It was mine.

No copy. No mistake.

Rosie picked up the typed note.

“Someone wanted you here tonight,” she said.

I looked at Matteo.

Something in his expression told me there was more.

“What aren’t you saying?”

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and withdrew another envelope.

It was identical to the one on the table.

Same cream paper.

Same black type.

“This arrived at my office this morning,” he said.

He handed it to me.

Inside was a note with only two sentences.

Booth seven. Seven o’clock. Come alone.

The truth about Mara will look you in the eyes.

My fingers began to tremble.

“You didn’t come here by accident.”

“No.”

“You knew I would be here?”

“I did not know what I would find.”

“And you said nothing.”

“I wanted to know whether seeing me was a coincidence.”

Anger sparked through my fear.

“You sat there and watched us?”

“I arrived four minutes before Theo spoke to me. I had not seen you until you came from the kitchen.”

Rosie set the second note beside the first.

“The same printer,” she murmured.

I barely heard her.

On the bottom edge of the paper, nearly hidden beneath the fold, was a faint blue mark.

A small crescent crossed by a single line.

My stomach dropped.

I had seen that symbol once before.

Six years ago.

On the corner of the note hidden beside Matteo’s medical report.

Matteo saw the change in my face.

“What is it?”

I touched the mark with one finger.

“The first note,” I whispered. “The one that told me to leave.”

His gaze lowered to the symbol.

“What about it?”

“It had this mark.”

Rosie leaned closer.

“A logo?”

“No. It looked like someone had drawn it by hand.”

Matteo took the page from me.

His face changed.

Not dramatically. With Matteo, the smallest changes were often the most revealing.

Recognition entered his eyes.

“You know it,” I said.

He did not answer.

“Matteo.”

He turned the page toward the light, studying the blue crescent.

“When I was a child,” he said slowly, “my father used this mark on private family documents. Nothing official. Only instructions meant for people he trusted completely.”

“Your father has been dead for eleven years.”

“Yes.”

“Then who else would use it?”

Matteo’s gaze shifted toward the dark front windows.

In their reflection, we stood together beneath the yellow diner lights: the wife who had vanished, the husband who had mourned her, and the empty space between us where our son’s future waited.

“My father used the symbol,” Matteo said, “but it did not belong to him.”

“To whom did it belong?”

Before he could answer, Rosie’s office door opened.

Theo appeared in the kitchen entrance, sleepy and rumpled, holding a folded piece of paper.

“Mama?”

I turned.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“There was a lady in Rosie’s office.”

Every thought in my head stopped.

Rosie stared at him.

“What lady?”

“The one in the picture.”

“What picture?” I asked.

Theo held up the paper.

“She said to give you this after the eye man found his ring.”

Matteo crossed the room in two strides, but stopped before reaching Theo, careful not to frighten him.

Rosie hurried past us into her office.

A second later, she called back, “The window is open.”

I knelt in front of Theo.

“Did the lady hurt you?”

He shook his head.

“She tucked the blanket around me. She knew my name.”

My hands went cold.

“What did she look like?”

“Like you.”

I took the folded paper from him.

It was an old photograph.

The edges were worn, the colors softened by time.

Two young women stood beside a lake, arms around each other, smiling into the sun.

One was me at seventeen.

The other was my older sister, Elena.

Elena, who had died in a car accident seven years ago.

On the back, beneath the same blue crescent, someone had written five words in fresh black ink.

Ask Matteo who identified me.

END OF PART 2 – LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT “THE ENTIRE STORY” IF YOU WANT TO READ THE FULL STORY