“Where is the second baby?”

Vincent Moretti’s voice was so quiet that everyone in the hospital room stopped moving.

Sophia stared at him.

“What second baby?”

He held up his phone.

Two newborn boys.

Two identical hospital blankets.

Two bracelets carrying his family name.

And only one child in the room.

Vincent turned toward the hospital director.

“Lock down the maternity wing.”

Within minutes, security guards blocked every elevator and exit.

But someone had already left.

A nurse named Evelyn Parker had disappeared twenty-three minutes after Sophia’s delivery.

Her employee badge had been found in a stairwell.

Her phone was switched off.

And the security footage from the nursery had been erased.

Vincent’s chief of security, Marco Bellini, arrived with a tablet.

“Boss, we recovered part of the recording.”

“Show me.”

The footage revealed Evelyn entering the nursery with a covered infant carrier.

She approached a second nurse.

They exchanged a few words.

Then Evelyn walked toward a service elevator.

But the most disturbing detail came at the end.

A man in a gray coat was waiting for her.

Vincent leaned closer.

“Freeze it.”

Marco stopped the recording.

The man’s face was partly hidden.

But Vincent recognized the silver ring on his hand.

A ring bearing the Moretti family crest.

Only four men possessed one.

Vincent.

His late father.

His uncle Lorenzo.

And his younger brother, Adrian.

Adrian had been missing for eleven months.

Officially, he had died in a boating accident.

His body had never been recovered.

Vincent slowly stepped backward.

“That’s impossible.”

Marco looked at him.

“Sir?”

“My brother is dead.”

Across the room, Sophia began sobbing.

Vincent turned toward her.

“What do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why did you request a private maternity wing?”

She shook her head.

“I was told it was safer.”

“By whom?”

Sophia covered her face.

“Your mother.”

The room fell silent.

Isabella Moretti stood near the window.

She had been holding the baby only moments earlier.

Now her hands were trembling.

Vincent looked at her.

“Mother?”

Isabella swallowed.

“Vincent, there are things about this family you don’t understand.”

“Then explain them.”

She looked toward the infant.

“Not here.”

Meanwhile, nearly two thousand miles away, I was sitting in a Seattle hotel room when my new phone rang.

The caller was my investigator, Nathan Hale.

“Claire, you need to leave the hotel.”

I sat upright.

“Why?”

“Someone accessed your flight information.”

“Vincent?”

“No.”

A pause.

“Someone much worse.”

Before I could answer, Nathan sent me a photograph.

It showed a man leaving the Chicago hospital.

He was carrying a black medical transport bag.

I recognized him immediately.

Adrian Moretti.

Vincent’s supposedly dead brother.

My stomach tightened.

Because Adrian was the one person who knew what had really happened during my fertility treatment three years earlier.

He had arranged the clinic.

He had paid the bills.

And he had personally delivered the news when the treatment failed.

I stared at the photograph.

“Nathan, where is he now?”

“We don’t know.”

Then Nathan said something that made my blood run cold.

“Claire, I finally obtained the archived records from your fertility clinic.”

I gripped the phone.

“What did you find?”

“Your treatment didn’t fail the way they told you.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“What are you saying?”

“There was a viable embryo.”

My eyes filled with tears.

“That’s impossible. They told me…”

“They lied.”

For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.

Nathan continued.

“The embryo was transferred out of the clinic under an authorization bearing your signature.”

“But I never signed anything.”

“I know.”

I looked toward the rain falling against my hotel window.

“Where was it transferred?”

Nathan hesitated.

“That’s the part you need to hear carefully.”

My hands began shaking.

“Tell me.”

“The receiving facility was connected to a private reproductive medicine program funded through one of Vincent’s companies.”

I closed my eyes.

The room seemed to tilt beneath me.

Then Nathan delivered the final detail.

“Claire, the transfer records show that your embryo was not destroyed.”

I whispered, “Where is my baby?”

Nathan took a breath.

“According to the latest records, a child connected to that embryo may have been born today.”

I dropped the phone.

At that exact moment, someone knocked on my hotel door.

Three slow knocks.

Then a man’s voice spoke from the hallway.

“Claire, it’s Adrian.”

My heart stopped.

“I know you’ve been looking for your baby.”

A pause.

“And I’m the only person who can tell you which one is yours.”