Chapter 3 - The Name Beneath the Photograph
Damian stared at the photograph for so long that I finally took it from him.
“Do you recognize the location?”
“No.”
Natalia stood outside what looked like a medical building.
No visible sign.
No street number.
Just brick, glass and a narrow strip of landscaping.
The man beside her was tall.
His face had been destroyed with something sharp.
But one detail remained.
A hospital identification badge clipped to his shirt.
“Doctor?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
Marcus stepped closer.
“I'll run the image.”
“No,” Damian said.
Marcus froze.
“You're off the investigation.”
“Damian—”
“You knew about the recordings.”
“I knew Natalia made them. I didn't know what was on them.”
“That's supposed to help?”
“She made me promise.”
Damian laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“My dead wife trusted my security chief with secrets she wouldn't tell me.”
“She was protecting you.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
Marcus looked toward the babies.
“She was protecting them too.”
Damian stepped forward.
I moved between them.
It was probably the stupidest thing I had done in years.
“Not here.”
Damian stared down at me.
“Move.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“They can hear you.”
“They're infants.”
“They're infants who recognize a voice from before they were born. Don't tell me what they can hear.”
Something in that sentence reached him.
He backed away.
Marcus exhaled.
“Start talking,” Damian said.
Marcus did.
Three weeks before the twins were born, Natalia had approached him privately.
She believed someone inside Damian's organization was monitoring her medical appointments.
She asked Marcus to help her make recordings and hide them.
“Why not tell me?” Damian demanded.
“Because she believed your reaction would expose what she was doing.”
“What was she doing?”
“Investigating the clinic.”
My attention sharpened.
“What clinic?”
Marcus pointed toward the photograph.
“Northlake Fertility Center.”
Damian looked confused.
“Natalia never went to a fertility clinic.”
“Yes,” Marcus said. “She did.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Damian sat.
Marcus explained.
Natalia and Damian had tried for years to have children.
Eventually she became pregnant.
Damian believed it had happened naturally.
It hadn't.
Natalia had undergone treatment privately.
“Why hide that?” I asked.
Marcus looked at Damian.
“Because somebody convinced her Damian would consider it weakness.”
Damian's face darkened.
“I wouldn't.”
“She realized that later.”
“Who convinced her?”
“I don't know.”
I examined the photograph again.
The scratched-out man.
The clinic.
The altered paternity report.
Pieces.
No picture yet.
“Where are Natalia's medical records?”
“Sealed,” Damian said.
“Get them.”
He looked at me.
“You think hospitals give me records because I ask?”
I raised an eyebrow.
He almost smiled.
“Fair point.”
Within an hour, his attorney Victor arrived.
He was polished, gray-haired, and irritated to have been summoned at three in the morning.
Then he saw me.
“Who's this?”
“My nurse,” Damian said.
Victor looked at my pajamas.
“Your nurse?”
“The twins' nurse.”
I disliked him instantly.
Damian placed the photograph on the table.
Victor's reaction lasted less than a second.
But I saw it.
Recognition.
“You've seen him,” I said.
Victor turned toward me.
“Excuse me?”
“The man in the photograph.”
“His face is gone.”
“You recognized something.”
Victor smiled.
“Ms…?”
“Bennett.”
“Ms. Bennett, perhaps leave criminal investigations to people qualified to conduct them.”
“Great idea. Which one of you is qualified?”
Marcus coughed again.
Damian's mouth twitched.
Victor didn't appreciate it.
Damian leaned forward.
“Who is he?”
“I don't know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I handled Natalia's estate, Damian. Not her medical appointments.”
“You arranged the twins' paternity test.”
“That was your request.”
“Where?”
“Private laboratory.”
“Which?”
Victor hesitated.
Too long.
Damian stood.
Victor's confidence cracked.
“Mercy Diagnostics.”
Marcus pulled out his phone.
Thirty seconds later, he looked up.
“Closed three months ago.”
“Owner?”
“Shell corporation.”
“Trace it.”
Victor suddenly reached for his coat.
Damian blocked him.
“Going somewhere?”
“I have court at eight.”
“It's four.”
“I need preparation.”
Damian's voice dropped.
“You're staying.”
Victor sat.
For the next two hours, the mansion transformed.
Files appeared.
Phones rang.
People whispered.
I stayed upstairs.
That was where I belonged.
Not because I was frightened.
Because Leo and Luca needed someone whose attention wasn't divided between revenge and secrets.
At 5:31, both finally slept.
I sat between their cribs.
One small hand remained wrapped around my finger.
I thought about the boy who had died hours earlier.
I thought about how strange grief was.
One child had left the world while two others seemed to be begging someone to tell the truth about how they'd entered it.
At 6:02, Damian appeared.
He looked ten years older.
“Coffee?”
“Please.”
He handed me a cup.
“Marcus traced the laboratory.”
“And?”
“It connects to Northlake.”
“The fertility clinic?”
“Yes.”
“Victor?”
“Claims he didn't know.”
“You believe him?”
“No.”
I drank.
“Damian, there's something you're avoiding.”
“What?”
“The obvious possibility.”
His eyes hardened.
“Say it.”
“The twins might not be biologically yours.”
The words hurt him.
I saw it.
But he didn't look away from the cribs.
“They're mine.”
“I'm talking about biology.”
“So am I.”
“You don't know that.”
“I don't care.”
That surprised me.
He walked toward Luca.
“My name is on their birth certificates. I held them the day they were born. I buried their mother. I've been awake every night since because they can't sleep.”
He touched Luca's tiny hand.
“If a laboratory tells me tomorrow that we share no blood, nothing changes.”
For the first time since meeting him, I stopped seeing the reputation.
I saw the father.
“Then why are you afraid of the test?”
He looked at me.
“Because I'm beginning to think the question isn't whether they're mine.”
“What is it?”
“Whether someone wants to take them.”
My stomach tightened.
He placed a folder beside me.
Natalia's records.
Marcus had obtained them.
I opened the folder.
Pregnancy notes.
Blood work.
Ultrasounds.
Then a fertility treatment consent form.
I scanned the signatures.
Natalia Moretti.
Dr. Samuel Reed.
Donor material: confidential.
I stopped.
“Damian.”
He leaned over.
At the bottom was a handwritten note.
TRANSFER COMPLETED: TWO EMBRYOS.
“Twins,” he said.
“Yes.”
Then I turned the page.
A later ultrasound.
Three fetal markers.
I stared.
“That can't be right.”
“What?”
I checked the date.
Twenty-one weeks.
I checked again.
“Claire?”
“Natalia wasn't carrying twins.”
His face changed.
“What?”
“At least not originally.”
I pointed.
“She was carrying triplets.”
Silence.
Damian took the page.
“Where's the third baby?”
“I don't know.”
He called Marcus.
The search became frantic.
Records were compared.
Hospital logs requested.
Names cross-referenced.
At 7:14, Marcus entered carrying a laptop.
“We found Dr. Samuel Reed.”
“Where?”
“He disappeared five months ago.”
“Dead?”
“No.”
“Then find him.”
Marcus didn't move.
“What?”
“There’s more.”
He turned the screen.
An old clinic photograph appeared.
Samuel Reed stood beside Natalia.
Same height.
Same shirt.
Same identification badge.
The face in the original photograph had been scratched out.
But now we could see it.
Damian stared.
“Who is he?”
Marcus swallowed.
“Before becoming a fertility specialist, Samuel Reed used another name.”
He clicked.
A younger photograph appeared.
Damian's face went white.
“Impossible.”
I looked between them.
“Who is he?”
Damian whispered the answer.
“My brother.”
Then the nursery door opened.
May you like
Sofia Moretti stood there.
And in her arms was a baby neither of us had ever seen.
