Chapter 2 - The Triplet in the Shadows
I stared at the handwritten note in the investigator's folder, my vision blurring as the room seemed to tilt.
"Explain this," I whispered, my voice carrying a quiet, lethal edge that made the private investigator, a hardened ex-detective named Miller, slide his chair back. "What third baby, Miller? Tell me right now, or I will ensure you spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary for conspiracy and kidnapping."
Miller swallowed hard, his hands shaking as he reached for a glass of water. "I didn't know about it until after the divorce was finalized, Rowan. I swear. Tessa... she paid off the attending obstetrician at the private clinic in Nashville. Maren didn't have twins. She gave birth to triplets."
My lungs seized. Triplets.
"The third baby, a little girl named Chloe, was born with a severe respiratory condition," Miller continued, his voice dropping to a panicked whisper. "Tessa had the doctor tell Maren that the baby died during delivery. But the baby was alive. Tessa had her transferred to a private care facility in East Tennessee under a false name. She used the baby as leverage."
"Leverage?" I roared, slamming my fist onto the mahogany desk, shattering the glass of water.
"Maren found out the baby was alive three months ago," Miller stammered, wiping water from his shirt. "Tessa told her that if she ever contacted you, or if she tried to claim her daughter legally, she would have the facility turn off the baby’s life support. That's why Maren was walking that road, Rowan. She’s been spending every single penny she makes, selling everything she owns, just to pay the private medical bills under the table to keep that little girl alive."
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The image of Maren standing by the dusty road, clutching two babies with a bag of aluminum cans at her feet, flashed through my mind. She wasn't collecting cans because she was poor. She was doing it because she was a mother fighting a silent war against a monster to save our daughter.
And I had thrown her out.
