Chapter 7 - IsabelThe DNA confirmation arrived at 6:42 the next morning.
That surprised nobody.
His passport was gone.
Two suits were missing.
His primary phone had been destroyed and left in the kitchen sink.
The refrigerator contained food.
His car remained in the garage.
Which meant he had either planned his exit carefully or someone had collected him.
Victor Beaumont, meanwhile, went on television.
He stood outside St. Catherine’s surrounded by reporters and called the allegations “grotesque fabrications.”
He condemned the trafficking documents as forgeries.
He praised Marcus Vale as “one of the finest physicians in New York.”
And he mentioned Sophia.
That was his mistake.
“I knew Sophia Rossi personally,” he said. “She cared deeply about this hospital and would be horrified to see her name used in such reckless accusations.”
I watched from Leo’s hospital room.
Elena stood beside me.
“Turn it off.”
“Not yet.”
Beaumont looked directly into the camera.
“If Mr. Rossi is grieving, I sympathize. But grief does not excuse destroying innocent people.”
I switched off the television.
Elena stared at me.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You have the face.”
“What face?”
“The face rich men make before they start buying newspapers.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It surprised both of us.
Leo improved slowly.
His medication stabilized the arrhythmia.
He gained weight.
His oxygen support decreased.
Elena continued helping with his feedings, though we began transitioning him toward bottles again.
Bennett insisted that we not make Elena permanently responsible.
“She lost a child,” he told me privately. “Be careful not to turn Leo into a replacement.”
That struck deeper than he intended.
When I brought it up with Elena, she became defensive.
“I know he isn’t Isabel.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“He’s Sophia’s son.”
“Yes.”
“So he’s my nephew.”
“Yes.”
Her expression softened.
The word had changed things.
Nephew.
Family.
Not replacement.
Connection.
A piece of the sister she never knew.
Meanwhile, investigators dismantled the St. Catherine’s records system piece by piece.
The ledger Daniel had hidden contained 214 suspected illegal transfers over thirty-seven years.
Some children had gone to families who genuinely believed they were participating in legal private adoptions.
Others went to people who had paid enormous “facilitation donations.”
Some biological mothers were told their children died.
Others were pressured into signing documents they could not read.
Several infants had actually died, and identities were then reused to cover later transfers.
It was worse than anything I imagined.
Rosa’s case was among the earliest documented.
Elena’s daughter Isabel appeared near the end.
But Isabel’s record contained something different.
No adoption placement.
No death transfer.
Just a notation.
Hold pending V.B. instruction.
Elena read it three times.
“What does that mean?”
Claire shook her head.
“We don’t know.”
“Is she dead?”
“No proof.”
“Alive?”
“No proof.”
I hated those answers.
Then Daniel Price surfaced.
Not publicly.
He walked into a federal building in lower Manhattan with two attorneys and requested protection in exchange for testimony.
He had spent four months moving between safe houses.
According to him, Marcus Vale had ordered a hospital administrator to alter neonatal records after Isabel’s birth.
Daniel suspected Isabel had been moved, but he never found where.
“Why Isabel?” Elena demanded when we met him through secure video.
Daniel looked exhausted.
“Because of you.”
“Me?”
“Your DNA.”
She stared.
Daniel explained.
When Elena’s baby was admitted, St. Catherine’s routine genetic screening flagged a familial pattern linked to an old archived sample.
Sophia’s.
Apparently, after Sophia began investigating her adoption, she had quietly submitted DNA to a private ancestry database.
The hospital’s internal system illegally accessed certain databases through a third-party contractor.
Someone realized Elena and Sophia were sisters.
Then Isabel’s birth created a dangerous possibility.
Another direct biological descendant connecting Rosa to Sophia.
“They were monitoring the family line,” Daniel said.
I felt sick.
“Why take Isabel?”
“To control evidence.”
Elena slammed her palm against the table.
“She was a baby!”
“I know.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
She stood.
I grabbed her shoulders gently.
“Elena.”
“Don’t.”
“We’ll find her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Then don’t promise.”
She was right.
So I changed the promise.
“We will not stop looking.”
That she accepted.
Days later, police recovered Vale’s abandoned rental vehicle near a private airport in New Jersey.
Security footage showed him boarding a small charter plane.
Destination: Vermont.
No onward flight record.
But Beaumont owned property in Vermont.
A private retreat near Lake Willoughby.
Authorities obtained warrants.
They found nobody.
But in the basement was a medical refrigerator.
Empty.
And a box of infant identification bands.
Including several from St. Catherine’s.
One belonged to Isabel Cruz.
Elena nearly fainted when investigators showed her the photograph.
This was the first proof Isabel had physically been at Beaumont’s Vermont estate.
Possibly alive.
Search teams flooded the property.
Cadaver dogs found nothing.
No grave.
No biological remains.
That was good news.
But the estate had been empty for weeks.
Then a neighbor remembered seeing a woman with a baby months earlier.
Not Beaumont.
Not Vale.
A middle-aged woman driving a dark green Subaru.
Investigators checked cameras at nearby gas stations.
They found the vehicle.
License plate partially visible.
Registered to Margaret Lane.
A retired neonatal nurse.
Former employer?
St. Catherine’s.
We had an address within hours.
Margaret Lane lived in a farmhouse near Burlington.
Police went first.
Elena and I waited at a federal office.
I had never seen someone tremble the way she did.
“What if it isn’t her?”
“We deal with that.”
“What if it is?”
“We deal with that too.”
“What if she doesn’t know me?”
“She was only days old.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I understood.
What if hope hurt more than grief?
The phone rang.
The agent answered.
His eyes lifted toward us.
“They found the woman.”
Elena stopped breathing.
“And?”
He listened.
Then stood.
“They found a child.”
Elena made a sound that did not sound human.
I grabbed her before she fell.
“Is it Isabel?”
“They’re doing confirmation.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
That was enough.
Elena sobbed into my chest.
Rosa collapsed into a chair.
Claire covered her face.
And I looked through the office window at the gray Manhattan skyline while something inside me broke open.
A child we thought had died was alive.
A mother had been given another chance.
For once, the universe had returned something it had stolen.
But the relief lasted less than an hour.
Because the Vermont police found something else in Margaret Lane’s farmhouse.
A hidden room.
Inside it were photographs of infants.
Dozens.
Records.
Medication.
Passports.
And a current photograph of Leo taken through the fence outside my estate.
Written beneath it were four words:
LAST LIVING ROSSI WITNESS.
Beside the photograph was a date.
Three days from now.
I showed it to my security chief.
“What does the date mean?”
He looked at me.
“We don’t know.”
I did.
Or at least I thought I did.
Beaumont had spent decades protecting his network.
Sophia was dead.
Daniel had survived.
Isabel had been recovered.
The evidence was collapsing around him.
And Leo was still alive.
May you like
Three days.
Whatever Beaumont had planned, we were running out of time.
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