Chapter 11 - THE BOY WHO WAS GIVEN AWAY
By midnight, I was back in a hospital.
Not St. Catherine.
Not anywhere with a Vale name on the donor wall.
County Women's admitted me for postpartum hemorrhage and dehydration.
Sophie slept in a clear bassinet beside my bed.
Luka sat outside the door because I asked him to keep watch.
Ethan sat nowhere.
I had told him to leave.
He did.
That was the first respectful thing he had done all day.
Ana stayed until a nurse threatened to charge her rent.
She finally went home at two in the morning.
I did not sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the linen bag moving on the security video.
I saw flames along the boathouse dock.
I heard my father's voice saying Margaret had sent photographs of me walking to school.
At 3:17 a.m., Luka knocked softly.
"You awake?"
"I do not think I will ever sleep again."
He entered.
Someone had found him a gray sweatshirt.
Without his jacket, the tattoos on his hands looked darker under the hospital lights.
He carried two paper cups.
"Tea."
"You do not look like a tea person."
"I am not."
"Then why do you have one?"
"The machine took my money twice and gave me two teas."
I laughed once.
He put one on the table.
For several minutes, we watched Sophie sleep.
"Does it feel different?" I asked.
"What?"
"Knowing Charles Vale was your biological father."
Luka considered the question.
"No."
Then he changed his mind.
"Yes."
I waited.
"Marco Moretti taught me to ride a bicycle."
"He sat beside me in the emergency room when I broke my wrist at twelve."
"He worked overtime for six months so I could go on a school trip to Washington."
"He is my father."
His voice tightened.
"A DNA report does not climb backward through time and erase that."
"No."
"But it tells me the man who watched me grow up poor from across the city could have changed it."
He looked at his hands.
"That part feels different."
"Did you ever meet Charles before the hospital footage?"
"Once."
I waited.
"At the cemetery after his fake funeral."
My eyes widened.
"You were there."
"Ethan saw me."
"Why?"
"Your father told me to go."
"He said someone might come after everyone left."
"Charles did."
I pictured a supposedly dead billionaire walking through his own cemetery after mourners went home.
"What did he say?"
"He asked my name."
"That is all?"
"Then he asked if Marco Moretti had been a good father."
Luka's jaw tightened.
"I thought he was some rich old friend of Andrew's."
"I told him Marco was the best man I knew."
"Charles cried."
My chest hurt.
"He knew."
"Apparently."
"Why did my father not tell you?"
"Because he was trying to get proof that could survive court."
"And because Margaret threatened you."
I looked away.
"She was willing to frighten him with his daughter to protect a lie about sons."
"She was willing to do worse."
"Do you think she killed him?"
Luka did not answer immediately.
"I think she created a world in which someone could kill him and expect to be rewarded."
That was somehow more terrifying.
A nurse entered to check my IV.
When she left, Luka placed the metal case on the bedside table.
The blood cards had survived the fire.
The photographs had too.
The video camera was damaged but intact.
"Tomas is taking the cards to an independent lab in Boston."
"No Vale network."
"No digital upload."
"Two separate labs."
I nodded.
"What about the tape?"
"Ethan saved most of it."
"The ending?"
"Gone."
"The name?"
"Gone."
I looked at Sophie.
"Celeste knew where we were."
"Yes."
"She pointed at Ethan."
"Yes."
"Do you think she started the fire?"
"No."
I looked at him.
"Why not?"
"She was standing in the wrong place."
"Meaning?"
"If she had poured fuel on the dock, she would have smelled like it."
"She was downwind and clean."
"You noticed that from across the water?"
"I notice people who want me to notice them."
"So she wanted us to see her."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"That is the question."
My phone buzzed on the table.
A message from Celeste.
I SHOWED YOU THE TAPE.
I looked at Luka.
"She says she showed us the tape."
A second message arrived.
I TOOK SOPHIE BECAUSE IT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO GET YOU OUT OF THE CITY BEFORE MARGARET'S MEN REACHED COUNTY CHILDREN.
My entire body went cold.
"She admits taking Sophie."
Luka's face hardened.
A third message.
I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO FORGIVE ME.
I AM ASKING YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW ORDERED SOMETHING WORSE.
Then a photograph appeared.
It showed a printed hospital order from County Children's.
SUBJECT: INFANT SOPHIE BENNETT.
PROCEDURE: EMERGENCY GENETIC RETENTION HOLD.
AUTHORIZED TRANSFER: VALE RESEARCH PAVILION.
At the bottom was Margaret's signature.
Beside it was Ethan's electronic signature.
My pulse pounded.
"Again."
Luka read it.
"Could be the power of attorney."
"Or Ethan."
"Yes."
My phone rang.
Celeste.
I answered on speaker.
"Where are you?"
Her voice was ragged.
"Moving."
"You kidnapped my baby."
"I got her back to you."
"You put me through eleven minutes of hell."
"It would have been the rest of your life if I had not moved first."
I gripped the phone.
"Do not make yourself the hero."
"I am not."
"Then what are you?"
She laughed once, and it sounded broken.
"A woman who chose the wrong man and then discovered his mother was worse."
I looked at Luka.
"Why were you with Ethan?"
Silence.
"Six months, Celeste."
"Why?"
"At first because I wanted him."
The honesty stung.
"And later?"
"Because Margaret paid me."
The room went silent.
"Paid you to sleep with my husband?"
"Paid me to keep him distracted."
"From what?"
"You."
I almost laughed from disbelief.
"He was already my husband."
"Exactly."
Celeste took a breath.
"Margaret knew Andrew's hidden protocol could activate if you had a child with Ethan."
"She wanted your marriage broken before the birth."
"She thought if Ethan left you, she could control the legal record before the trust provision activated."
My stomach turned.
"Did Ethan know you were paid?"
"No."
"Did he know about the kidnapping?"
"No."
"Did he know about the fire?"
"No."
"Then why did you point at him?"
Celeste went quiet.
"Because he has the thing everyone is looking for."
Luka stepped closer to the phone.
"What thing?"
"Charles's envelope."
My heart stopped.
Ethan had told us it was locked at the Vale house.
"He said he never opened it."
Celeste laughed bitterly.
"Ethan lies when he is afraid."
"Where is it?"
"Ask him what he took from Charles's coffin before the funeral."
Luka went still.
"Charles was not in the coffin."
"Exactly."
The line crackled.
Celeste lowered her voice.
"Margaret staged a funeral, but she put personal effects inside the coffin to make the family believe the death was real."
"Ethan opened it the night before the service."
"He found an envelope addressed to the boy who was given away."
"He kept it."
"He has had it for twelve years."
I stared at the phone.
"Why would he tell me it was at the Vale house?"
"Because he is terrified of what it says."
A loud sound came through Celeste's end.
A door slamming.
She gasped.
"I have to go."
"Wait."
"Claire, listen."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Do not trust anyone who knew your father before he died."
"Not Mercer."
"Not Margaret."
"And not the man standing beside your hospital door."
The call ended.
I looked at Luka.
He stared back at me.
Neither of us spoke.
Then the door opened.
Ethan stood in the hallway.
He held an old cream envelope.
Across the front, in Charles Vale's handwriting, were six words.
May you like
FOR THE BOY WHO WAS GIVEN AWAY.
