Chapter 2 - Someone Knew My Name
Lorenzo didn't move.
Neither did I.
The voice outside had been quiet enough that I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.
Then it came again.
"Elena."
Lorenzo looked at me.
"You know that person?"
"No."
Margaret had stopped breathing normally.
That told me more than anything she could have said.
Lorenzo noticed too.
"Who is outside?"
Margaret shook her head.
"I don't know."
He stepped toward her.
"You recognized the voice."
"No."
"You did."
The shadow beneath the door disappeared.
Footsteps retreated.
Lorenzo tried the handle again.
Still locked.
He took out his phone.
No signal.
That seemed impossible inside a mansion covered by security systems.
Then the nursery lights flickered.
Margaret whispered, "Oh no."
Lorenzo turned sharply.
"What?"
She covered her mouth.
I held Leo closer.
"Margaret."
She looked toward the ceiling camera.
The tiny red indicator had gone dark.
"The cameras," she whispered.
Lorenzo stared upward.
Someone had disabled them.
Within minutes, his security team opened the nursery from the hallway.
Nobody admitted locking it.
Nobody had seen anyone.
And somehow, fourteen minutes of security footage from the second floor had disappeared.
Lorenzo ordered the entire wing sealed.
Margaret was escorted downstairs.
I expected to be fired.
Instead, Lorenzo told me to stay with Leo.
"I can't," I said.
"Why?"
Because every second I held his son reopened a wound I wasn't sure would ever close.
But when I looked down, Leo was asleep against me.
For the first time since I'd entered the nursery, his face looked peaceful.
"I lost my daughter three weeks ago," I said.
Lorenzo's expression changed.
He said nothing for several seconds.
Then quietly, "I'm sorry."
I hated those words.
Not because they were wrong.
Because there was nothing else anyone could say.
"I shouldn't be here."
"You saved him."
"We don't know that."
"I know what I've watched for six weeks."
His voice cracked.
"I watched my son disappear ounce by ounce."
That was when I understood something.
Lorenzo's reputation had entered the room before he ever had.
But grief didn't care who people feared.
It reduced everyone to the same helpless thing.
He looked at Leo.
"My wife died giving birth to him."
"I'm sorry."
His eyes stayed on his son.
"She made me promise I'd protect him."
The words landed differently now.
I understood promises made to the dead.
They became heavier because you could never renegotiate them.
A doctor arrived twenty minutes later.
Dr. Samuel Reed had treated Leo since birth.
He examined him, reviewed the monitor and stared at the feeding record.
"This doesn't make sense."
Lorenzo's voice hardened.
"That's becoming a popular phrase tonight."
Dr. Reed looked at me.
"You fed him?"
I nodded.
"And he swallowed normally?"
"Yes."
The doctor examined Leo again.
"Then we need to test everything he's been receiving."
Every bottle.
Every supplement.
Every medication.
Lorenzo ordered the nursery refrigerator sealed.
But when one of his guards opened it—
the shelves were empty.
Dozens of prepared bottles had vanished.
Margaret insisted she knew nothing.
Lorenzo didn't believe her.
Neither did I.
But something about her fear bothered me.
She didn't look like someone afraid of being caught.
She looked like someone afraid of whoever had locked that door.
At dawn, Lorenzo asked me to come to his study.
Leo was sleeping upstairs under Dr. Reed's supervision.
I stood across from Lorenzo's desk.
"You can leave," he said.
I blinked.
"What?"
"I'll pay you six months' salary."
"I don't want your money."
"I know."
That surprised me.
He leaned back.
"That's why I'm offering it."
"Why?"
"Because whoever interfered with my son's care knows your name."
He paused.
"And I don't think that's a coincidence."
Neither did I.
"My ex owes people money."
"What people?"
"I don't know."
"Name."
"Eric Dalton."
Something flickered in Lorenzo's eyes.
"You know him?"
"No."
But he was lying.
I could tell.
Before I could challenge him, someone knocked.
One of his security men entered carrying a plastic evidence bag.
Inside was a baby bottle.
"We found this behind the laundry incinerator."
Lorenzo stood.
"What's in it?"
"We haven't tested it."
I stepped closer.
There was something scratched into the bottom of the bottle.
Three letters.
E.D.
My stomach dropped.
Eric Dalton.
My ex.
"Where exactly did you find this?"
The guard answered.
"Behind the incinerator."
Then he looked at me.
"There's something else."
He handed Lorenzo a photograph.
It showed a man entering the service gate two nights earlier.
The image was grainy.
The face was partly turned.
But I recognized the jacket.
I had bought it for him last Christmas.
Eric.
My knees nearly gave out.
"He was here."
Lorenzo looked at me.
"You said men were hunting him."
"They were."
"What if they weren't hunting him?"
I stared at the photograph.
"What are you talking about?"
"What if Eric wasn't running from them?"
He pushed another photograph across the desk.
This one showed Eric meeting someone beside the estate garage.
A woman.
Her face was hidden.
But her uniform wasn't.
A nurse's uniform.
Margaret's uniform.
My pulse hammered.
Then Lorenzo's phone vibrated.
He looked down.
A message had arrived from an unknown number.
There was no text.
Only a photograph.
Lorenzo opened it.
His face changed.
"What?"
He turned the screen toward me.
The photograph showed me leaving the hospital three weeks earlier.
I was carrying a small white memory box.
Lily's box.
Beneath the image were six words.
ASK ELENA WHERE HER DAUGHTER WENT.
I stopped breathing.
Lorenzo enlarged the photograph.
Something was visible behind me.
A woman standing near the hospital entrance.
Watching me.
I recognized her.
Margaret.
Then another message arrived.
This one contained an address.
And beneath it:
THE BABY BOTTLES ARE ONLY THE BEGINNING.
Lorenzo looked at me.
"We're going."
But before either of us moved, the study door opened.
Dr. Reed stood there, pale.
He held Leo's laboratory results.
May you like
And the first words out of his mouth were:
"We found something in his blood."
