Chapter 6 - Bring Me My Son
Dante stared at Reeves.
“Explain.”
Reeves opened the ledger.
A page from thirty-eight years earlier contained a familiar surname.
VALENTI.
Dante’s own birth year.
Carlo went pale.
“No.”
Dante looked at his father.
“What?”
Carlo couldn't speak.
Reeves did.
“The network attempted to switch Dante.”
Silence.
“But they failed,” Reeves continued. “A nurse discovered the mismatch.”
Mara looked at him.
“Like I did.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
Reeves lowered his eyes.
“She disappeared.”
Dante felt cold.
“Name.”
“Eleanor Bennett.”
Mara stopped breathing.
“My grandmother.”
Everyone turned.
Mara stared at the ledger.
“My grandmother was a nurse. My mother said she left the family when I was a baby.”
Reeves shook his head.
“She didn't leave.”
Mara sat down.
Reeves explained that Eleanor had spent years documenting switched infants. She eventually gave her records to Reeves, who continued her work secretly.
That was why Sofia had trusted him.
That was why Gabriel—or the man pretending to be Gabriel—had controlled him through threats.
Mara whispered, “Did he kill her?”
“I don't know.”
Dante closed the ledger.
“We find him.”
The following morning brought the first good news.
Leo gained weight.
Hope gained weight too.
Dante stood between their incubators.
Sofia beside him.
Mara walked in holding a folder.
“We have a DNA match for Hope.”
Dante turned.
“His name is Samuel Carter.”
His biological mother was alive.
Twenty-four-year-old Rachel Carter had delivered prematurely at another hospital nineteen days earlier.
She had been told her son died shortly after birth.
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“Bring her.”
An hour later, Rachel entered the NICU.
She saw Hope.
Then collapsed against Mara, sobbing.
“My baby.”
Dante turned away to give her privacy.
Sofia took his hand.
For the first time, the nightmare had returned something instead of taking it.
Rachel sat beside Samuel for hours.
Dante watched from the corridor.
“This is what your father wanted,” Sofia said.
“What?”
“To return them.”
Dante looked at Carlo.
His father seemed twenty years older.
“We finish it,” Dante said.
Carlo nodded.
They transferred copies of both ledgers to federal investigators, trusted journalists, and attorneys representing affected families.
The network began collapsing before sunset.
Three doctors arrested.
Two administrators.
An adoption broker.
A former judge.
Evelyn Shaw agreed to testify after learning she had been manipulated.
But the founder remained missing.
Then Dante received a call.
Unknown number.
He answered.
The false Gabriel spoke.
“You took everything.”
“You took children.”
“I gave them better lives.”
“You stole them.”
“Semantics.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing from you.”
A pause.
“I already took what I wanted.”
Dante turned toward Leo’s incubator.
Empty.
His heart stopped.
“Sofia!”
She ran in.
Mara checked the adjoining room.
“Leo was here thirty seconds ago!”
Dante dropped the phone.
The hospital locked down.
Security footage showed a respiratory therapist entering the NICU with valid credentials.
The credentials belonged to a dead employee.
The man pushed Leo’s portable incubator into a service elevator.
Dante nearly tore the building apart.
Then Mara noticed something.
“The bracelet.”
“What?”
“We changed Leo’s identification system after the switch. His band has a low-energy location transmitter.”
“Track it.”
She opened the hospital system.
A blinking point moved east.
Across Manhattan.
Toward the river.
Dante called Luca.
Vehicles moved.
Sofia tried to come.
“No.”
“That is my son.”
“And I already lost you once.”
“You didn't lose me.”
“I buried you.”
The words stopped her.
Dante touched her face.
“Stay with Samuel. Stay with Mara. I will bring Leo home.”
He left.
The signal stopped at an abandoned ferry terminal.
Dante arrived with Luca and federal agents who had joined the investigation.
For once, Dante didn't care who received credit.
He wanted his son.
They entered.
No gunfire.
No guards.
Only a portable incubator beneath a hanging light.
Empty.
Dante’s stomach dropped.
A phone lay inside.
It rang.
Dante answered.
“You always arrive one step late,” the founder said.
“Where is Leo?”
“You still think this is about the child.”
“It is to me.”
“That is why you will lose.”
Dante looked around.
Then noticed a security camera.
He smiled slightly.
“No.”
The founder went quiet.
“You made the same mistake everyone makes.”
“What mistake?”
“You thought being dangerous meant I wouldn't ask for help.”
Federal technicians traced the live camera transmission.
An address appeared.
Private airfield outside Queens.
Dante ran.
They reached the airfield as a small jet prepared for departure.
Federal vehicles blocked the runway.
Dante saw a man carrying a neonatal transport carrier toward the aircraft.
“Leo!”
The founder turned.
For the first time, Dante saw fear.
Agents surrounded him.
He pressed a handgun against the carrier.
Dante stopped.
“Put it down.”
“Tell them to leave.”
“You aren't leaving with my son.”
“Then he dies.”
Dante stared at him.
“You won't do it.”
The man smiled.
“You don't know me.”
“No. But I know you spent forty years collecting children because controlling their lives made you feel powerful.”
Dante stepped forward.
“You need witnesses.”
Another step.
“You need people to know you mattered.”
Another.
“If you hurt that baby, you're nothing but an old man with a gun.”
The founder’s face changed.
Anger.
Exactly what Dante wanted.
The gun shifted toward Dante.
Luca fired once.
The weapon fell.
Federal agents tackled the founder.
Dante ran to the carrier.
Leo was crying.
Alive.
Dante lifted him carefully.
“I've got you.”
His voice broke.
“I've got you, little man.”
Leo’s tiny hand closed around Dante’s finger.
Sirens surrounded them.
The nightmare was over.
Or Dante thought it was.
Then Luca approached holding the founder’s phone.
“Boss.”
Dante looked up.
“There’s a scheduled message.”
“To who?”
Luca showed him.
The recipient was Sofia.
The message contained only six words.
YOU STILL HAVEN’T TOLD DANTE EVERYTHING.
Dante looked toward the hospital lights in the distance.
His phone rang.
Sofia.
He answered.
She was crying.
“Dante, before you come back…”
She stopped.
“What?”
“There’s something about the night of the explosion.”
Dante held Leo tighter.
“What about it?”
May you like
Sofia whispered:
“The bomb wasn't meant for us.”
