Chapter 3 - Thrown Out Before Midnight
I didn't open the door.
I turned off the lamp.
Another knock.
"Elena."
Cassian.
I unlocked it.
He entered alone.
His eyes moved across the room, taking in the stained carpet, my open suitcase, the paternity report and the crackers I'd been eating because everything else made me sick.
"You shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you."
He noticed the blood-type chart.
"What is that?"
I handed him the report.
"According to this, you're AB positive."
"So?"
"You're O negative."
He stared at me.
"How do you know?"
"I tested you the night you collapsed."
I showed him my notes.
His face hardened.
"Could you be mistaken?"
"No."
"Four years ago I needed blood after I was shot."
"And?"
"O negative."
That changed everything.
Cassian called someone.
"Bring me my medical records. Originals only."
He hung up.
"Someone called me," I said.
"Who?"
"A woman. She said she switched the tube."
Cassian's expression turned dangerous.
"Why?"
"She didn't stay on the line long enough for an interview."
He walked to the window.
"I didn't cancel your mother's care."
"I figured that out."
"Or freeze your accounts."
"I figured that out too."
He looked back.
"Vittorio."
"Maybe."
"You don't believe it?"
"It's too obvious."
Cassian almost smiled.
"You're homeless, pregnant and accused of adultery, and you're criticizing the villain for being obvious?"
"I'm multitasking."
That actually produced the smallest smile.
Then it vanished.
"I should have believed you."
I folded my arms.
"You should have listened."
"I listened."
"You counted down from thirty."
"I was angry."
"So was I. I didn't accuse you of impregnating yourself."
He looked away.
Good.
Let him feel it.
His phone buzzed.
The records had arrived at the mansion.
I refused to return there.
So Cassian had them brought to the motel.
We spread fifteen years of medical files across the bed.
His infertility diagnosis appeared six times.
But I noticed something odd.
The earliest report was dated twelve years ago.
Cassian frowned.
"I was first tested when I was nineteen."
"This says twenty-one."
He searched another folder.
Nothing.
"Where's the original?"
Gone.
Then I found the second inconsistency.
All six reports referenced the same baseline analysis.
A test supposedly performed at Bellwether Reproductive Institute.
"One source," I said.
"What?"
"These aren't six independent diagnoses. Five doctors relied on the original Bellwether results."
Cassian stared at the pages.
"So if the first test was false..."
"Everyone afterward inherited the lie."
He went silent.
I knew what he was thinking.
If Cassian had never been infertile, then my pregnancy wasn't impossible.
It was evidence.
But we still didn't know what had happened during those missing hours.
I swallowed.
"Cassian."
"I know."
"We need to find out what happened that night."
His face closed.
"I've tried."
"What?"
"Since the morning you left."
I stared.
He reached inside his jacket and produced something wrapped in cloth.
My silver hair clip.
"I lied when I said Ezra found it under a sofa."
"I knew that."
"I found it in my hand when I woke."
The room seemed smaller.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't remember how it got there."
"Do you remember anything?"
"A voice."
"Whose?"
"I don't know."
He hesitated.
"And you."
My heart accelerated.
"What about me?"
"You were saying my name."
I sat down.
"Anything else?"
"Someone pulled you away."
My skin prickled.
"From you?"
He nodded.
We needed the mansion's security archive.
Cassian said recordings from that night had been erased.
But erased wasn't always destroyed.
We drove to an old Raldi warehouse where backup servers were stored.
At 2:10 a.m., Cassian's technician recovered seventeen seconds of corrupted footage.
Dining room.
Me beside unconscious Cassian.
A hand entered frame.
A woman placed something into my water.
Then another figure appeared.
Ezra.
I stopped breathing.
On-screen, Ezra looked directly toward the camera.
Then he reached up.
The footage ended.
Cassian said nothing for almost a minute.
Finally:
"Ezra has been beside me since I was sixteen."
"Then he knew about your infertility records."
"Everything."
"And my father's debt?"
"Everything."
Cassian reached for his phone.
I stopped him.
"If Ezra did this, calling him tells him we know."
"What do you suggest?"
"Find out why."
The recovered file contained metadata.
One destination folder.
BASEMENT CAMERA 04.
The basement I'd been forbidden to enter.
Cassian looked at me.
"That camera doesn't exist."
"It did that night."
We returned to the mansion through a service entrance.
The basement was empty.
Behind an old wine rack, I found scratches in the floor.
Cassian moved it.
A steel door stood behind it.
No handle.
Only a keypad.
He entered a code.
Red light.
Wrong.
Then I saw four faint fingerprints on the buttons.
And 9.
Cassian tried 1179.
Green.
The lock clicked.
The door opened inward.
May you like
A light was already burning inside.
And somebody was sitting there waiting for us.
