Chapter 10 - The Baby Who Knew Her VoiceThe scream from upstairs changed Matteo.
Until that moment, he had been a man fighting enemies.
Now he was a father racing death.
Liana reached the staircase first, driven by a terror so pure it erased pain, exhaustion, and sense. Behind her, Matteo shouted orders that shook the mansion walls.
“Lock the east wing! Dario, with me! Nobody touches those children!”
Smoke rolled through the lower hall. Guards moved like shadows through chaos. Somewhere glass continued to fall from the shattered dining room window.
Liana took the stairs two at a time.
Isaac.
Nico.
Both upstairs.
Both vulnerable.
Both breathing because of impossible mercy and monstrous cruelty.
At the top of the stairs, one guard lay on the carpet, groaning. Another was on his knees, pressing a hand to his shoulder. Dr. Rowan stood in the doorway of the medical suite with a metal tray in both hands like a weapon.
Her face flooded with relief when she saw Liana.
“They’re alive,” she said quickly. “But someone tried the service passage.”
Liana shoved past her.
Isaac lay in his crib, startled but unharmed.
Nico was crying.
The sound tore through Liana’s chest, but this time it was ordinary fear, not the haunted scream from before.
She went to him first because Isaac was safe and Nico was spiraling.
The moment she lifted him, his cries broke into hiccups.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
Matteo entered seconds later, gun drawn, blood streaked across one cheek from the shattered window.
He saw Nico in Liana’s arms.
Then Isaac in the crib.
Only then did he breathe.
Dario followed, grim. “Rafe escaped through the garden wall. We clipped one of his men. The other is dead. South perimeter found a maintenance hatch open.”
“Bellardi,” Matteo said.
Dario nodded. “Had to be.”
Dr. Rowan shut and locked the suite door. “The babies cannot stay here.”
“No,” Matteo said. “They can’t.”
Liana looked at him. “Where can they go?”
Matteo’s eyes moved to hers.
For the first time, she saw uncertainty.
Not weakness.
The terrible realization that power had limits when betrayal lived inside the walls.
Dario spoke quietly. “The lake house.”
Matteo shook his head. “Rafe knows it.”
“The old convent?”
“Too exposed.”
Dr. Rowan said, “My clinic.”
Everyone looked at her.
She lifted her chin. “Private wing. Small staff. My staff. No one gets in without me knowing.”
Matteo stared. “You lied to me for seven months.”
Dr. Rowan flinched but did not look away. “I failed Alessia years before you married her. I failed Liana when St. Agnes took her child. I failed Nico because I believed your grief had made you paranoid instead of targeted.” Her voice tightened. “Let me be useful now.”
Silence.
Then Matteo nodded once. “Prepare it.”
Within twenty minutes, the babies were moved through a private garage into two separate vehicles, then switched again under an overpass before dawn fully broke. Matteo trusted no route, no driver, no camera, no uniform.
Liana rode with both babies.
Matteo rode beside her.
Nico slept against her left side.
Isaac slept against her right.
Two tiny bodies breathing in uneven rhythm.
Liana looked down at them and felt something inside her break open—not the sharp break of grief this time, but the terrifying ache of hope.
Hope hurt more than despair.
Despair asked nothing.
Hope demanded everything.
Matteo watched the road. “Tell me about Isaac’s father.”
Liana’s body stiffened.
She had known the question would come.
“He said his name was Daniel Vale.”
Dario, driving, glanced at the mirror.
Matteo’s face hardened. “There is no Daniel Vale in Chicago worth Rafe’s interest.”
“I met him at the diner where I worked before St. Agnes. He came in late for two weeks. Ordered coffee. Asked questions. Made me feel…” She stopped, ashamed.
Matteo’s voice was quieter than expected. “Less alone?”
Her eyes burned.
“Yes.”
“What happened when you told him you were pregnant?”
“He smiled.” The memory sickened her now. “He said he wanted to do right by me. Then he disappeared three days later. His phone disconnected. The address he gave me was fake.”
Matteo looked out the window.
Liana studied his profile. “You know who he was.”
“No.”
“But you suspect.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Matteo’s jaw tightened. “Rafe.”
The word landed like a stone in her stomach.
“No.”
“He uses aliases.”
“No.”
“I will confirm it before I say it as fact.”
But she already knew.
Not in her mind.
In her body.
The charm Daniel had worn beneath his shirt.
Old silver.
Like a key.
Liana closed her eyes.
The Cradle had not found her by chance.
Rafe had chosen her.
Her pregnancy had been planned, monitored, harvested.
Isaac had been born into a trap before he ever took his first breath.
Nico stirred, and she held him closer.
Matteo saw the movement.
“My cousin will not touch your son again.”
Liana looked at him. “Or yours.”
His eyes met hers.
“No,” he said. “Or mine.”
Dr. Rowan’s clinic sat behind an ordinary brick exterior in a quiet neighborhood that looked too peaceful for what they carried inside. The private wing had no signage, no waiting room, and only three staff members, all older women who looked at Matteo’s armed guards without blinking.
Isaac was placed in a warmed bassinet.
Nico was monitored beside him.
Blood was drawn. Samples secured. Records duplicated and hidden in three places. Dario built a temporary command center in a supply office. Matteo made calls in a voice so cold Liana was grateful not to be on the receiving end.
By noon, the first arrests began.
A retired St. Agnes administrator trying to board a private flight.
A funeral director with offshore payments.
A neonatal contractor found in a motel under a false name.
Mrs. Bellardi was caught at a border crossing before sunset.
Mirella Santi vanished.
Rafe remained missing.
The war was not over.
But the lie had cracked.
That night, Liana sat between the two bassinets while the clinic lights dimmed around her.
Isaac had fed twice.
Nico had slept for four straight hours.
Matteo stood near the window, phone in hand, reading a message.
“What?” Liana asked.
He looked up.
For once, he did not hide the truth.
“The genetic test came back.”
Her heart stopped.
“Isaac?”
Matteo walked closer.
“He is your son.”
Relief struck first.
Then fear.
“And his father?”
Matteo’s expression darkened.
“Rafe.”
Liana looked at Isaac, so small beneath the blanket, and felt rage rise cleanly through her grief.
Not shame.
Not regret.
Rage.
“That does not make Isaac his,” she said.
Matteo’s gaze held hers. “No. It makes Rafe the man who will answer for him.”
Nico stirred in his bassinet and began to fuss.
Liana reached for him, but Matteo moved first.
He lifted his son carefully, awkwardly, as if afraid of doing it wrong after so many weeks of screams.
Nico whimpered.
Matteo looked at Liana.
She stepped closer, but did not take the baby.
“Talk to him,” she said.
Matteo swallowed. “He doesn’t calm for me.”
“He will.”
Nico cried harder.
Matteo’s face tightened with pain.
Liana placed one hand lightly on Matteo’s arm and began the lullaby softly.
“Hush now, little star…”
Nico’s crying slowed.
But this time, Liana stopped after the first line.
Matteo looked at her.
“Keep going,” she whispered.
His voice was rough when he tried.
Low.
Uncertain.
Almost broken.
“Hush now, little star…”
Nico blinked up at him.
Listening.
Recognizing not the stolen recording, not the device, not the fear wired into his little body—
But his father.
Matteo’s voice cracked.
The baby’s hand opened against his shirt.
Liana watched the most feared man in Chicago lower his forehead to his son’s and close his eyes.
For the first time since she entered the Varric estate, the silence did not feel dangerous.
It felt like the first breath after drowning.
Then Dario entered the room.
His face ruined the moment.
Matteo looked up. “What?”
Dario held out a phone.
“Mirella sent a video.”
The room went cold.
Matteo handed Nico gently to Liana before taking the phone.
On the screen, Mirella Santi stood in front of a wall covered in files.
Hundreds of them.
She smiled into the camera.
“If you are watching this, Matteo, then you found the first layer. Congratulations.”
Liana held both babies closer.
Mirella continued, “But the Cradle was never mine. It was Alessia’s inheritance. And if you want the rest of the children alive, you will stop digging.”
The video flickered.
Then shifted.
A new image appeared.
A room full of cribs.
Some empty.
Some not.
Liana’s breath caught.
Matteo’s eyes turned black.
Mirella’s voice softened.
“One mother found her child tonight. Do not make me punish the others for it.”
The video ended.
No one moved.
Outside the clinic window, dawn had become night again.
The first day of truth was over.
The war for the children had just begun.
Matteo looked at Liana, at Isaac, at Nico.
Then he spoke quietly.
“Now we dig deeper.”
And in Liana’s arms, Nico did not cry.
May you like
He only watched his father with wide, trusting eyes, as if he had finally learned the difference between the voice that haunted him—
And the people who had come to bring him home.
