Chapter 6 - The Cemetery Where Babies Had No NamesThey reached St. Catherine’s Cemetery just before sunset.
The rain had softened into mist, blurring the rows of headstones until the dead seemed to be standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the gray sky.
Elena had called this place once.
She remembered because the receptionist had been kind.
Not helpful.
Kind.
That had made it worse.
“No infant burials under Bright Future,” the woman had said. “No cremation releases under your name. I’m sorry, honey.”
Elena had cried in the stairwell afterward because the voice had sounded like someone’s grandmother.
Now she stood at the cemetery gate with Caden Voss beside her, three toddlers asleep in car seats behind bulletproof glass, and her mother’s stolen key inside Monroe’s coat pocket.
“Children stay in the car,” Caden said.
Elena nodded.
For once, she did not argue.
The place felt wrong.
Not haunted. Organized.
As if grief had been catalogued too neatly here.
Ortega and two men swept the path ahead. Monroe walked with Elena and Caden toward the chapel, a small stone building with stained glass windows and ivy crawling up one side.
A man waited under the awning.
He was old, thin, and dressed in a black coat that had seen better winters. His white hair stuck out beneath a flat cap. He held a rosary in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Jonah Reed?” Monroe asked.
The old man looked at Elena.
His face folded with pain.
“Marisol’s girl,” he said.
Elena stopped.
“You knew my mother?”
“I knew her fear.”
Caden stepped slightly forward.
Jonah’s eyes moved to him.
“And Isabella’s husband.”
Caden’s body went rigid.
“You knew my wife?”
Jonah took one final drag from the cigarette, dropped it, and crushed it beneath his shoe.
“Not enough to save her.”
The chapel door opened behind him.
“Come in. Before they decide whether they’re brave enough to follow.”
Inside, candles flickered along the wall. The air smelled of wax, damp stone, and lilies past their prime.
Jonah locked the door.
Caden watched every movement.
“You were a priest?” Monroe asked.
“Was,” Jonah said. “Then I learned confession protects sinners better than victims.”
Elena liked him immediately.
He led them past the altar to a narrow side door.
“Your mother came to me three days before she died,” he said. “She could barely stand. She had a key, a fever, and enough terror in her eyes to make me believe every word.”
“Why didn’t you go to police?” Elena asked.
Jonah stopped.
His face tightened.
“I did.”
Silence.
“The detective who took my statement died in a boating accident. The nurse who gave me copies of burial permits vanished to Arizona, except her sister says she never left Chicago. The first reporter I contacted was arrested with drugs in his trunk.”
Caden’s expression did not change, but the men behind him shifted.
Jonah looked at him.
“Yes, Mr. Voss. Not every disappearance in this city belongs to your family.”
Caden absorbed that like a slap he knew he deserved.
Jonah unlocked the side door.
A staircase descended beneath the chapel.
Cold rose from below.
Elena’s body resisted the first step.
Caden noticed.
“You don’t have to go down.”
“Yes,” she said.
Her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
“I do.”
The basement was older than the chapel above it. Stone walls, low ceiling, iron sconces fitted with modern bulbs that buzzed faintly. Crypt markers lined one wall.
A-1.
A-2.
A-3.
A-4.
Caden stopped at A-4.
Isabella Voss.
Beloved Wife.
1989–2024.
Elena stared at the date.
One month before her delivery.
Caden touched the name with two fingers.
For a moment, he was not a crime boss or a father or a man trying to hold rage in his teeth.
He was a widower in a basement.
“I’m sorry,” Elena said softly.
He nodded without looking at her.
Jonah moved to the opposite wall.
C-4B.
The marker was blank.
No name.
No date.
Nothing.
Monroe put on gloves and inserted the key.
It turned.
The stone face opened outward with a low scrape.
Elena stepped back.
Inside was not a coffin.
It was a metal lockbox.
Jonah crossed himself.
“I never opened it.”
Monroe lifted the box out and placed it on a stone table.
There was another lock.
Ortega handled that one.
Inside were folders, a bundle of photographs, three hospital bracelets, and a small pink blanket with faded yellow ducks.
Elena saw the blanket and nearly collapsed.
Caden caught her elbow, then released it when she steadied.
“That blanket,” she whispered.
Monroe looked at her.
“I bought it before I knew I wasn’t supposed to buy anything. I hid it under my mattress.”
Her fingers hovered above it.
“How is it here?”
Jonah’s voice was low.
“Your mother brought it. She said you would need proof you had loved them before anyone allowed you to.”
Elena covered her mouth.
Monroe unfolded the first document.
Her face changed.
“Birth certificate worksheets.”
Caden moved beside her.
“Names?”
“No legal names. Temporary identifiers. Baby A, B, C.” She turned one page. “Delivery date April seventh. Time stamps: 8:12 p.m., 8:14 p.m., 8:16 p.m.”
Elena began shaking.
The real times.
The real night.
Monroe continued.
“Mother listed as Elena Marisol Voss. Genetic mother field…” She stopped.
Caden’s voice sharpened.
“What?”
Monroe looked at Elena first.
Then Caden.
“Genetic mother: Elena Marisol Voss.”
Elena stared.
“No. That’s impossible.”
Caden’s face lost color.
“They told Isabella we used donor eggs,” he said.
Monroe looked down.
“Genetic father: Caden Elias Voss.”
The basement went silent.
Elena’s mind emptied.
Not donor embryos.
Not a carrier.
Not someone else’s children.
Hers.
Biologically hers.
Caden’s.
Alive.
Caden gripped the edge of the stone table.
“They harvested her eggs?”
Monroe scanned the documents.
“During the fertility screening. The forms were hidden inside surgical consent for an ovarian cyst removal.”
Elena shook her head.
“I never had cyst surgery.”
Monroe looked up.
“You had an outpatient procedure three weeks before implantation. You told me Bright Future called it uterine preparation.”
Elena pressed both hands to her stomach.
She remembered anesthesia.
A nurse saying mild cramping.
A ride home in a voucher car.
Her mother asleep on the couch, too sick to ask why Elena looked pale.
“They took from me,” Elena whispered.
Caden’s voice was deadly quiet.
“And used me.”
Jonah handed him a photograph.
Caden looked.
His face broke.
Elena leaned closer.
The photo showed Isabella Voss in a hospital bed, thin and pale but alive. She held a folder against her chest. Her eyes were wide with terror.
On the back, someone had written:
She found the donor file.
Caden’s hand shook.
“When was this taken?”
Monroe checked the photo stamp.
“February third.”
Caden shook his head.
“She was supposed to be in Milan on February third.”
Jonah’s voice was gentle.
“She came here that night. She asked to see the children’s mother.”
Elena looked at him.
“What?”
“She didn’t know your name yet. Only that there was a woman being used. She said if the children were born, the woman had a right to know.”
Caden closed his eyes.
The dead wife Elena had tried not to hate had been trying to save her.
Guilt moved through Elena like cold water.
“What happened to her?” she whispered.
Jonah looked at Caden.
“The next morning, St. Augustine’s reported she suffered a fall.”
Caden’s voice was low.
“They told me car accident.”
“They told me suicide,” Jonah said.
Monroe swore under her breath.
Elena picked up the three hospital bracelets.
Baby A.
Baby B.
Baby C.
Each one had a tiny barcode.
Each one had her name.
She pressed them to her chest.
For fourteen months, she had begged for a grave.
Instead, her proof had been buried beside another woman who had tried to tell the truth.
A sound came from above.
A door closing.
Ortega lifted his gun.
Caden moved Elena behind him before she could protest.
Footsteps crossed the chapel floor overhead.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Then a voice echoed down the stairwell.
Celeste Hale.
“You found the sentimental box,” she called. “Good. I was tired of waiting.”
Caden’s face changed.
Every man in the basement went still.
Celeste laughed softly from above.
“But you should have brought the children inside, Mr. Voss. Leaving them in the car was such a predictable mistake.”
May you like
Elena’s blood turned to ice.
Caden ran.
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