Chapter 5 - Lily's Missing Hospital File
The voice belonged to Dr. Reed.
Lorenzo moved toward the staircase.
Isabella stopped him.
"He wants you angry."
"Why?"
"Because angry people stop thinking."
Footsteps crossed the floor below.
Dr. Reed called again.
"I'm alone."
Lorenzo gave a humorless smile.
"No one who says that is ever alone."
We escaped through the rear of the house while his security team intercepted Reed.
Isabella disappeared before we reached the estate.
She left only a note.
FIND THE FILE.
I went home.
For the first time since losing Lily, I entered the room I had prepared for her.
The yellow curtains were still there.
So was the crib.
I hadn't been able to dismantle it.
Lorenzo stood at the doorway while I knelt.
Under the crib was a loose floorboard.
Beneath it sat a blue folder.
Inside were copies of hospital records.
Lily had been born alive.
Her Apgar scores were low but improving.
She had breathed.
She had cried.
She had been transferred from the delivery room at 4:31 A.M.
At 5:06, someone changed her status.
DECEASED.
At 5:19, another record showed her being moved to a neonatal unit under a different name.
I pressed both hands over my mouth.
Lorenzo crouched beside me.
"She's alive."
"I don't know."
"But she was."
"For at least that morning."
There was another document.
A payment authorization.
Signed by Dr. Reed.
Approved by—
Lorenzo's father.
Alessandro Rossi.
Lorenzo stared at the signature.
"My father died five years ago."
"Could it be forged?"
"Maybe."
He turned the page.
A handwritten note was clipped behind it.
SOFIA KNOWS. MOVE THE CHILDREN BEFORE SHE SPEAKS.
Lorenzo sat back.
The betrayal wasn't recent.
It was inherited.
That night, Eric finally told me everything.
He had accumulated gambling debts years earlier.
A man approached him and offered to erase them if he stayed close to me.
At first Eric thought it was about money.
Then I became pregnant.
The instructions changed.
Convince Elena to leave the city.
If she refuses, frighten her.
Eric claimed the shove on the stairs wasn't planned.
I believed that part.
It didn't make it forgivable.
"You killed the life I had," I told him.
"I know."
"No. You don't."
He cried.
I didn't comfort him.
Some remorse belongs to the person carrying it.
Then he gave us the name of the man who had paid him.
Victor Hale.
Margaret's husband.
The estate's longtime financial administrator.
Lorenzo's godfather.
Victor had managed Rossi family trusts for decades.
Including Leo's.
Lorenzo pulled the trust documents.
There it was.
If Leo died before his first birthday, control of Sofia's charitable holdings transferred temporarily to the trust administrator pending succession review.
Victor Hale.
Millions.
But money still didn't explain Lily.
Isabella did.
She returned shortly before midnight.
She carried a flash drive containing Sofia's files.
Sofia had discovered Victor was laundering stolen charitable funds through falsified neonatal transfers.
Babies weren't being sold.
The records were being manipulated to create phantom patients, fake transfers and false expenses.
But occasionally, a real child became tangled in the paperwork.
Lily had been one of them.
Someone had falsified her death to cover an unauthorized transfer after the fall.
"What happened to her?"
Isabella hesitated.
"She was moved."
"Where?"
"To a private pediatric facility."
"Is she there?"
"I don't know."
I grabbed her hand.
"Find out."
She nodded.
Then Lorenzo asked the question nobody wanted to ask.
"Why weaken Leo?"
Isabella looked at him.
"Victor needed his death to look natural."
Silence.
"And Margaret?"
"She discovered it."
"Then why didn't she stop it?"
"She tried."
Isabella explained that Margaret had been secretly replacing contaminated bottles with safe ones whenever possible.
But Victor controlled schedules, staff and surveillance.
The wine wasn't hers.
Someone had drugged her that night.
The bottle we found had been planted to implicate Eric.
Everyone was being positioned to blame someone else.
A perfect circle of suspicion.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
No voice.
Only the sound of a baby crying.
My entire body froze.
"Hello?"
The crying continued.
Then a woman whispered:
"Mommy's looking for you."
The call ended.
A message arrived immediately afterward.
A photograph.
A baby girl asleep in a hospital crib.
Today's newspaper lay beside her.
She was alive.
My Lily was alive.
Under the photograph was one sentence:
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT HER BACK.
Then a second message appeared.
An address.
I recognized it immediately.
St. Catherine Medical Center.
Room 417.
I looked at Lorenzo.
He saw the screen.
"No."
"I'm going."
"It's a trap."
"I know."
"Then don't."
I grabbed my coat.
"If Leo were there, could anyone stop you?"
He had no answer.
Twenty minutes later, I stood outside Room 417.
No guards.
No nurses.
No sound.
I reached for the handle.
May you like
It was already unlocked from the inside.
And someone was waiting for me.
