Chapter 6 - The Chapel Beneath St. AgnesMatteo smashed the phone against the floor.
It broke into three pieces.
No one commented.
The hidden nursery remained silent except for Nico’s soft crying and Liana’s ragged breathing. Dr. Rowan lifted the evidence envelopes with shaking hands. Dario’s men photographed every wall, every cabinet, every file, every crib.
But Liana could not look away from Isaac’s yellow duck blanket.
She picked it up when no one stopped her.
It smelled wrong.
Not like her baby.
Not like hospital detergent.
Like cold storage and perfume.
“They had him here,” she whispered.
Matteo stood beside her. “Yes.”
“Not the whole time.”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because this place feels abandoned recently.”
She looked up at him.
He was not comforting her.
He was giving her facts.
Strangely, that helped.
Facts meant Isaac had moved. Facts meant Isaac had been alive when they moved him. Facts meant there was a trail.
Dario approached. “We found fresh tire marks behind the loading entrance. Two vehicles. One van, one sedan. The van left within the last six hours.”
“Traffic cameras?”
“Already pulling.”
“St. Agnes chapel,” Liana said.
Matteo turned.
“She said bring me there. Why?”
Dr. Rowan answered. “The chapel hasn’t been used in years. The hospital built a new interfaith room on the main floor after renovation.”
“So it’s empty,” Liana said.
“Forgotten,” Dr. Rowan corrected.
Matteo looked at her. “How do you know so much about forgotten places in St. Agnes?”
The doctor’s face changed.
Dario looked up.
Liana saw it too.
There was history there.
Dr. Rowan closed the file cabinet slowly. “Because I worked there when the first rumor started.”
Matteo’s eyes narrowed. “You told me you only heard stories.”
“I did hear stories.”
“You were part of them?”
“No.” Her voice sharpened. “I was young, and I was stupid, and I believed powerful doctors when they said grieving women imagined things.”
Liana’s chest tightened.
Dr. Rowan looked at her. “A mother came to me twenty-three years ago. She said her baby was alive. I told her the records said otherwise.”
“What happened to her?” Liana asked.
The doctor swallowed.
“She walked into the river two weeks later.”
No one spoke.
Dr. Rowan’s eyes shone, but her voice remained steady. “After that, I started asking questions. Quietly. Too quietly. By the time I understood there was a network, the records vanished, the nurses transferred, and the lead doctor died in a car accident.”
“Mara Bell?” Matteo asked.
“She would have been a teenager then.”
“Who led it?”
Dr. Rowan looked at him.
“Dr. Mirella Santi.”
Matteo went still.
Dario whispered, “Alessia’s physician.”
Liana felt the room tilt.
Matteo’s wife had trusted a monster.
“My wife’s doctor,” Matteo said.
Dr. Rowan nodded.
Matteo’s face emptied again.
That terrifying calm returned.
“Dario.”
“I’m already looking for Santi.”
“She disappeared after Alessia’s funeral,” Dr. Rowan said. “Officially retired. No forwarding address.”
“Everyone leaves an address,” Matteo said.
Liana clutched Isaac’s blanket. “We don’t have time.”
Matteo looked at her.
“Sunrise,” she said. “That’s what she keeps saying. She wants something before sunrise.”
“She wants you.”
“Then use me.”
“No.”
“You keep saying no like that word has saved anyone tonight.”
His eyes flashed.
Liana stepped closer. “My son is alive because they needed him. Nico is alive because they need him. Alessia died because she learned something. Your housekeeper ran because someone paid her. This has been happening around you for seven months, and you didn’t see it.”
Dario looked away, bracing for Matteo’s reaction.
Matteo did not move.
Liana’s voice broke. “I didn’t see it either. But I am looking now.”
Nico cried harder.
Liana turned instinctively and took him from the carrier. The moment he touched her, his cries softened.
Matteo watched his son’s face.
Then he looked at Dario. “Prepare the decoy.”
Dario nodded once.
Liana blinked. “What decoy?”
“You want them to think they have you,” Matteo said. “Fine. We give them what they want.”
“I’m not hiding while someone else wears my face.”
“You are if you want your son alive when we find him.”
She hated him for making sense.
By 4:42 a.m., they were back near St. Agnes.
The hospital rose against the fading night, its windows glowing with the false peace of places where people prayed for miracles and received invoices instead.
Matteo’s men moved in layers.
One team entered through maintenance.
One through the ambulance bay.
One through the old records wing.
The chapel sat below the original building, accessible by a service corridor sealed during renovation.
Liana wore a dark coat over her red uniform. Her hair was tucked beneath a scarf. She remained in an unmarked van across the street with Dr. Rowan, Nico, and two guards.
The decoy was a young woman named Elena, similar height, similar build, wearing Liana’s uniform beneath a coat. From a distance, in poor light, she could pass.
Liana hated watching her go.
Matteo stood near the chapel entrance, hidden in shadow, speaking into his earpiece.
Dario’s voice came through the van speaker. “Decoy approaching lower corridor.”
Nico slept uneasily in Liana’s lap.
Dr. Rowan monitored him with one hand and held a small emergency kit with the other.
Liana stared at the hospital.
Every instinct in her screamed to run inside.
Matteo’s voice came through the comms. “Hold.”
Silence.
Then Dario: “Movement near chapel.”
Liana’s pulse hammered.
A new voice entered the channel. Female. Soft.
“Elena is in position.”
Then a gunshot cracked through the speakers.
Liana jolted.
Nico woke screaming.
Dr. Rowan grabbed the baby monitor as one guard pushed Liana down behind the van seat.
Voices exploded over comms.
“Contact!”
“North corridor!”
“Decoy hit?”
“Elena is down but breathing!”
Liana’s hands shook around Nico.
Matteo’s voice cut through everything.
“Lock the hospital.”
Then another sound came through the speaker.
A baby crying.
Not Nico.
Liana froze.
Her entire body knew.
“Isaac,” she whispered.
Dr. Rowan stared at her.
The crying came again through Matteo’s open comms, distant but real.
Liana did not think.
She shoved the guard aside, threw open the van door, and ran.
“Liana!” Dr. Rowan shouted.
Nico cried behind her.
A guard grabbed for her coat, but she slipped free.
The hospital entrance blurred ahead. Somewhere men shouted. Somewhere Matteo roared her name.
But beneath the chaos, beneath the gunfire, beneath the alarms beginning to wail—
May you like
Her baby was crying.
And no mother on earth could be ordered to stay away from that sound.
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