Chapter 1 - The Name Beneath the Snow
Nathan refused to let Victoria Kane into the neonatal ward until a state trooper verified her identity.
The woman who arrived wore an expensive gray coat, but her gloved hands shook as she set an envelope on the hospital reception desk.
She said the child the family knew as Lily had once been registered as Elizabeth Carter, a baby reported dead at St.
Agnes in October 2019.
Nathan demanded to know why a five-year-old would be registered as an infant seven years earlier.
Victoria said someone had falsified the date, not the child's existence.
She had brought an original hospital photograph showing Sarah holding a newborn with a crooked silver bracelet around her own wrist.
The back of the photograph carried three words in Sarah's handwriting.
'Please remember her.'
Nathan recognized the bracelet, but he didn't trust Victoria's explanation.
He asked why she had waited until the children were nearly killed.
Victoria said she had tried to help Sarah years earlier, until Marcus threatened to destroy her younger son's life.
She confessed she had remained silent and called that silence her greatest crime.
Elena interrupted with news from security.
The woman who had removed Lily from the hospital had been found in a maintenance stairwell, injured but conscious.
Caroline Reed had not abducted Lily for Marcus.
She had hidden the girl when an unknown man intercepted their stretcher.
As Nathan raced upstairs, his phone rang from a blocked number.
He heard Lily breathing, then a man's voice describing a red ribbon tied around her wrist.
'Your sister kept one promise,' the voice said.
May you like
'Now you keep yours.'
