Chapter 7
David unlocked the files at 9:32 a.m.
By 9:40, every screen in the safehouse filled with names.
Doctors.
Judges.
Caseworkers.
Federal agents.
Private donors.
Adoption brokers.
Families who paid for babies they were told were “legally surrendered.”
Mothers who were told their babies died.
The room went silent.
I thought of every woman waking in a hospital bed like I once did, reaching for a child who had been turned into profit.
My knees weakened.
David caught my elbow.
I pulled away.
Not cruelly.
But clearly.
He let go.
Good.
He was learning.
Alessandro arrived that afternoon against medical advice.
He came in a wheelchair, Luca beside him with one arm bandaged.
The mafia boss looked half-dead and twice as dangerous.
Logan ran to him with Captain Bear.
“Cold man!”
Alessandro blinked.
Luca coughed to hide a laugh.
I nearly smiled despite myself.
Alessandro accepted the title with grave dignity.
“Little doctor.”
Logan climbed onto the couch near him.
I started to stop him.
Alessandro lifted one hand.
“I will not harm him.”
“I don’t know that.”
“No,” he said. “But he knows.”
Logan held Captain Bear out.
“He kept Daddy’s secret.”
Alessandro touched the bear’s head.
“He kept many people alive.”
The tenderness was strange.
But not fake.
Then Alessandro looked at me.
“Cole will run to the only place he still controls. The task force evidence vault.”
David nodded.
“If he destroys the physical files, he’ll claim the digital ones are fabricated.”
“Then we get there first,” I said.
Every man in the room looked at me.
I hated that.
“What?”
David said, “Cat, no.”
“You do not get to no me.”
His mouth closed.
I turned to Alessandro.
“My hospital badge still works in some service areas. Vanessa used me because I was invisible. Let me be invisible one more time.”
Luca shook his head.
“Too dangerous.”
I looked at him.
“My son slept in a supply closet because I was poor and desperate. Dangerous has already been in my life. At least now I get to choose where I stand.”
Alessandro smiled faintly.
“There she is.”
“Who?”
“The woman David would not stop talking about.”
That hurt.
I looked away.
The plan was simple and terrible.
Father Matteo would take Logan to a church safehouse with Rebecca, my best friend from nursing school.
David would enter the federal building with old credentials Cole thought were disabled.
Alessandro’s people would create a distraction outside.
I would use my hospital contractor badge to access the records transfer corridor.
Luca would stay with me.
I did not like Luca.
I trusted him more than most people.
That evening, I said goodbye to Logan in the church basement.
He hugged my neck.
“Mommy come back?”
“Yes.”
“Daddy too?”
I looked at David.
He stood a few feet away, afraid to promise what he had already broken once.
I answered for both of us.
“We will try with everything we have.”
Logan frowned.
“That’s not promise.”
“No,” I whispered. “It’s the truth.”
He accepted that.
Children do, when adults stop decorating lies.
At midnight, we entered the federal building.
The hallways smelled like old paper and polished floors.
My hands shook inside my borrowed coat.
Luca walked beside me as if we belonged.
David’s voice came through an earpiece.
“Vault level in two minutes.”
I whispered, “Be careful.”
He paused.
“You too.”
We reached the transfer corridor.
My badge beeped green.
The door opened.
For one second, hope lifted.
Then a gun pressed into my back.
Cole’s voice spoke near my ear.
“Mrs. Winters, you are becoming a serious inconvenience.”
Luca froze.
Cole’s men stepped from a side office.
David’s voice snapped in my ear.
“Cat?”
May you like
Cole smiled.
“Tell your husband to bring me the encryption key, or I make his son an orphan for real this time.”
