Chapter 5
Ethan went back to the hospital with Detective Singh.
I stayed in the safe house with Lily and Aunt Margaret.
That was the hardest thing I had done since finding my daughter alive.
Waiting felt like being buried while still breathing.
Lily played with blocks on the rug, but she kept glancing at the door.
Every time a car passed, she crawled into my lap.
Aunt Margaret sat beside me with an ice pack on her temple.
“You need rest,” she said.
“I need this to end.”
“It will.”
I looked at her.
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” she said. “But I know you.”
Before I could answer, Detective Singh called.
I put her on speaker.
“We found Rose.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Alive?”
“Yes. Hiding in the old maternity records wing.”
Ethan’s voice came through next, rough and low.
“She had keys. Storage logs. Video discs. Bank transfers.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did she talk?”
“She’s talking now,” Detective Singh said. “She says Eleanor ordered the false death report. Dr. Vale signed it. Serena helped arrange Lily’s transfer.”
The name hit me like a slap.
Serena.
Even after all this time, she was still in the room.
“Why?” I asked.
Ethan answered.
“Because my father’s will left controlling shares to my firstborn child.”
Aunt Margaret whispered, “Dear God.”
I had never known that.
I had known Ethan was rich.
I had known Blackwood money could buy silence.
But I had not known my baby had been born owning the key to an empire.
Detective Singh continued.
“If Lily was declared dead, the shares remained under Eleanor’s control until Ethan had another child.”
“With Serena,” I said.
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
Ethan’s voice broke.
“My mother tried to erase my daughter so she could choose a different heir.”
I looked at Lily.
She stacked one blue block on a yellow one.
Small hands.
Soft cheeks.
A child, not a fortune.
A child who had been passed through strangers because powerful people wanted paperwork to obey them.
“Where is Serena?” I asked.
“Being picked up now,” Detective Singh said.
But something in her voice warned me.
“What?”
There was a pause.
“She has an attorney already claiming you abducted Lily from a legal placement.”
I almost laughed.
“Of course she does.”
“They are moving fast,” Detective Singh said. “We need your original records.”
“They took everything.”
“Not everything,” Aunt Margaret said.
I turned.
She stood carefully and walked to the closet.
From inside a box of old linens, she pulled out a faded diaper bag.
My diaper bag.
The one I thought disappeared from my hospital room.
“How do you have that?” I whispered.
“You came to me once after the clinic,” she said. “You were half drugged. You kept saying, ‘They took the pink bag.’ I went back the next day and found it in a trash cart behind the hospital.”
She set it on the table.
“I kept it because it was the only thing that proved you had prepared for a living baby.”
My hands shook as I unzipped it.
Inside were tiny socks.
A blanket.
A handwritten birth plan.
And a small hospital bracelet.
Baby Girl Blackwood.
I pressed it to my mouth and broke.
Lily crawled into my lap.
“Mama sad?”
“Happy sad,” I whispered. “Because you were always mine.”
A knock came at the door.
The officer checked through the peephole.
Then he opened it.
Ethan stepped in.
He looked at the bracelet in my hand.
His knees nearly gave out.
“Is that hers?”
I nodded.
He came closer, stopping at the edge of the rug.
Lily watched him carefully.
I held out the bracelet.
He took it like it was made of breath.
His tears fell silently.
“I missed everything,” he whispered.
“You missed what they stole,” I said.
He looked at me.
“There’s a difference.”
“I’m not sure there is.”
“There is,” I said. “Because missing can be forgiven someday. Stealing cannot.”
He closed his fist around the bracelet.
“I’ll spend my life proving I know that.”
Before I could answer, Detective Singh called again.
Ethan put it on speaker.
“We arrested Dr. Vale,” she said. “Serena is gone.”
Ethan’s face changed.
“What do you mean gone?”
“Her apartment was empty. Her phone was left behind. We found a passport missing.”
I stood too quickly and pain shot through me.
“She’s running.”
“No,” Detective Singh said. “We think she’s coming for leverage.”
The safe house suddenly felt too small.
A car slowed outside.
The officer lifted his hand.
No one moved.
Lily began to cry.
The car stopped.
A woman’s voice called from the porch.
“Claire?”
I knew that voice.
Smooth.
Sweet.
Deadly.
May you like
Serena Vale.
“I only want what belongs to me.”
