Chapter 5 - The Records That Never ExistedMercy General moved Matteo to a pediatric cardiac room before midnight.
Dominic moved the city.
By the time Sophie stepped into the hallway, two more Moretti men had appeared near the elevators, not loud, not obvious, but present in a way that made every passing nurse walk faster. A black-suited attorney stood beside a vending machine with a leather folder under one arm. Someone had brought Dominic a clean shirt. He had not changed.
Sophie still wore the borrowed overcoat.
She sat in a plastic chair outside Matteo’s room with her elbows on her knees and stared at her hands.
They had stopped shaking.
That worried her.
When grief first returned, it shook everything. When it got too deep, it became calm.
Dominic emerged from the room and closed the door softly behind him.
Softly.
A man who had threatened a restaurant now closed doors softly because a sleeping baby lay behind them.
That should not have mattered to Sophie.
It did.
“Dr. Ellison says he’s stable for now,” Dominic said.
“For now is good.”
“For now is what doctors say when they do not want fathers punching walls.”
“They say it because the body is complicated.”
He looked at her.
“You defend them?”
“No. I defend accuracy.”
Something almost like amusement passed through his eyes. It vanished quickly.
His attorney approached.
“Dominic.”
The name, without the formal Mr. Moretti, made Sophie glance up. The attorney was in his sixties, silver-haired, beautifully dressed, with the exhausted eyes of a man who had kept powerful people out of prison and still slept poorly.
Dominic did not turn. “Tell me.”
“There are no birth records at St. Agnes.”
Sophie stood.
Dominic’s expression did not change, but the hallway seemed to tighten around him.
“What do you mean no birth records?”
“I mean Isabella Moretti did not deliver a baby at St. Agnes, Mercy, Northwestern, County, or any registered private birthing center in Cook County under her name or known aliases.”
“She delivered at home,” Dominic said.
The attorney’s eyes moved briefly to Sophie, then back.
“There should still be a midwife filing, emergency certificate, pediatric follow-up, something. The birth certificate on file was submitted by a private physician.”
“Marlowe.”
“Yes.”
Sophie’s stomach turned.
Dominic’s jaw flexed once. “Where is he?”
“His office says he left for Zurich this afternoon.”
The guard by the elevator looked up.
Dominic smiled.
It was not human.
“Zurich,” he said.
The attorney opened the folder. “His flight plan says Zurich. His jet is still at Midway.”
Sophie crossed her arms tighter.
“So he lied.”
The attorney looked at her with new interest.
Dominic said, “He breathed.”
The attorney continued. “His house is empty. Staff dismissed yesterday. Bank transfers began moving three days after Isabella’s death.”
Dominic’s hand curled into a fist.
Sophie watched him fight himself.
For Matteo.
For the hospital hallway.
For her warning.
He looked toward the closed room.
Then he said, “Keep digging.”
The attorney nodded and walked away.
Sophie sank back into the chair.
Dominic remained standing.
“You should go home,” he said.
She almost laughed.
“Now you become considerate?”
“You have done what you came to do.”
“I didn’t come to do anything. I was working a dinner shift.”
“Then go back to your life.”
“My life?” Sophie looked up at him. “My life was carrying plates until your baby screamed like my dead son and showed me a scar that should not exist. That was my life tonight. I don’t get to unsee that.”
“You think staying near me is safe?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
She looked through the small window in Matteo’s door. The baby lay in a crib too large for him, wires on his chest, oxygen near his nose. For a moment, his sleeping face became Leo’s. Then not. Then both.
“Because someone did something to him,” she said. “And maybe to my son too.”
Dominic’s eyes sharpened.
“You think Leo’s death was connected?”
“I don’t know.”
But the words tasted false.
She had wondered things after Leo died. Grief made suspicion easy, so she had buried the thoughts because no one trusted a grieving mother who asked too many questions. The missing page in Leo’s chart. The nurse who cried when Sophie thanked her. Dr. Marlowe’s sudden avoidance. The hospital’s generous charity write-off two days after Sophie threatened to request a full review.
At the time, everyone called it kindness.
Now it looked like silence purchased cheaply.
Dominic sat beside her.
The plastic chair seemed offended by the cost of his suit.
“Tell me what happened the day Leo died,” he said.
Sophie stared straight ahead.
“You don’t ask small questions.”
“I don’t have time for them.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have patience for them.”
He accepted that.
For a while, the only sound was the distant elevator bell.
Then Sophie spoke.
“Leo was stable that morning. Not good. Stable. There’s a difference parents learn to hate. The night nurse told me his oxygen numbers had improved. Dr. Marlowe said he wanted to run one more test before discussing discharge planning.”
Dominic listened without interruption.
“I went downstairs for coffee because everyone kept telling me to leave the room for ten minutes. When I came back, there were people running. His monitors were screaming. They said he had crashed during transport.”
“Transport where?”
“That’s the thing.” Sophie’s hands tightened in her lap. “No one ever clearly told me. They said imaging. Then procedure. Then emergency intervention. Every answer changed depending on who asked.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“Was there an investigation?”
“A hospital review.”
“That means no.”
Sophie let out a breath that might have been a laugh if it had contained any humor.
“They told me his heart was too fragile. They told me I had done everything right. They told me sometimes medicine loses.”
“And you accepted that?”
She turned on him.
“My baby died. I could barely stand. I had no money, no husband, no family with power. Do you know what it takes to challenge a hospital when you are a twenty-four-year-old mother with a dead child and overdue rent?”
Dominic did not flinch.
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”
The honesty disarmed her.
She looked away.
“I signed papers. I buried him. I disappeared.”
Dominic’s voice changed.
“Where is his body?”
Sophie went cold.
“What?”
“Where is Leo buried?”
“Rosehill Cemetery.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“The hospital said it wasn’t necessary. The death was expected due to complications.”
Dominic’s eyes darkened.
“Expected deaths are convenient.”
Sophie stood so fast the chair scraped the floor.
“Do not talk about my son like he is a clue on your board.”
Dominic rose too.
For a second they stood close enough for anger to become something else entirely, some dangerous current neither wanted to name.
Then Matteo cried inside the room.
Both of them turned.
Sophie moved first.
Dominic let her.
Inside, the night nurse was adjusting Matteo’s blanket.
“He woke up fussy,” the nurse said. “Not alarming. Just uncomfortable.”
Sophie approached the crib slowly.
“Hi, Matteo,” she whispered. “I know. Hospitals are rude.”
Dominic stood at the foot of the crib, watching.
The baby’s eyes opened, dark and unfocused.
Sophie placed one finger gently into his palm.
He gripped it.
The force of that tiny hold broke her heart with impossible precision.
Dominic watched the baby hold Sophie’s finger.
Something in his face closed, then opened.
“He likes you,” he said.
“He doesn’t know me.”
“He knows something.”
Sophie looked down.
Matteo’s little hand squeezed again.
From the hallway came hurried footsteps.
The eyebrow-scar guard appeared in the doorway.
“Boss.”
Dominic turned.
“What?”
The guard’s face was grim.
“Marlowe’s nurse was found.”
“Alive?”
“Barely.”
Sophie’s blood chilled.
The guard looked at her, then back at Dominic.
“She kept saying one thing before they put her under.”
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“What thing?”
The guard swallowed.
“She said, ‘Tell Leo’s mother the babies were switched.’”
May you like
Sophie’s knees gave out.
Dominic caught her before she hit the floor.
Related Stories
