Chapter 4 - The Baby Who Wasn't ThereI reached the nursery before Elias could stop me.
Clara lay in her bassinet beside the window, sleeping beneath a knitted blanket. Grace's bassinet stood beside hers.
Empty.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
I rushed toward it, searching beneath the blanket as if my daughter might somehow be hiding there.
“No, no, no!”
Elias reached the doorway behind me.
“Luca!”
His lieutenant appeared immediately.
“Lock down the building. Nobody leaves. Check every exit and every camera.”
I turned on Elias.
“Where is my daughter?”
“We'll find her.”
“You said they were safe!”
“I believed they were.”
For the first time, I saw something dangerous break through his controlled expression. Not anger directed at me, but anger at himself.
He lifted Clara from her bassinet and handed her to the nurse, who had rushed in behind us.
Then he knelt beside the empty bed.
A small white hospital bracelet lay on the mattress.
He picked it up.
The name printed on it was GRACE MILLER.
Beneath the name was a second line of numbers.
Elias studied it.
“Who examined the girls at the hospital?”
“Dr. Bennett and a nurse called Melissa,” I answered, struggling to think. “There were other people. I was exhausted. I didn't see their faces clearly.”
“Did you leave the girls alone with anyone?”
“Never willingly.”
The nurse hurried into the room with a security guard.
“Mr. Vance, the hallway camera went offline for exactly ninety seconds. Someone used an authorized access code.”
“Whose code?”
The guard swallowed.
“Luca Moretti's.”
Every man in the room turned toward him.
Luca's face went rigid.
“I didn't take that baby.”
Elias rose slowly.
“Explain.”
“My credentials were cloned. I've been working with your security team for twelve years. If I wanted to get past a camera, I wouldn't leave evidence pointing directly at myself.”
“That sounds remarkably convenient,” Elias replied.
I barely heard their argument.
Grace was gone.
I sank beside the bassinet and pressed my hands against my face. I could still remember her tiny fingers curling around mine hours after her birth.
She'd been crying when Nathan's men dragged me out.
I'd whispered that I would never leave her.
I'd promised.
And now she was gone.
Then I noticed something beneath the bassinet.
A tiny silver object glinted between the wooden slats.
I reached for it.
A cuff link.
Black onyx, surrounded by a narrow silver border.
I recognized it instantly.
Nathan had worn a matching pair to our wedding.
He'd given them to himself as an anniversary gift three months later, proudly telling me that their design was exclusive.
I handed the cuff link to Elias.
“He was here.”
Elias examined it.
“Your husband?”
“He has a pair just like this. I saw them every day for years.”
Elias's phone rang.
He answered without looking away from the cuff link.
“Yes?”
A man's voice spoke from the other end.
Elias listened.
Then his expression became terrifyingly still.
“Repeat that.”
The caller spoke again.
Elias closed his eyes for one brief second.
When he opened them, the softness I'd occasionally glimpsed in him had vanished.
“Find every hospital employee who touched those children,” he ordered. “Bring me Dr. Bennett. Alive.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” I demanded.
He hesitated.
Then he showed me a photograph received moments earlier.
Grace lay in somebody's arms beneath the bright lights of a private medical facility.
Her eyes were closed. Her tiny hand rested against a dark sleeve.
A hospital identification card hung from the person's neck.
The face had been blurred.
But the words on the card were clear.
DR. MATTHEW BENNETT.
Elias looked at me.
“Your daughter wasn't taken by a stranger.”
May you like
He paused.
“She was taken by the man who delivered her.”
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