Chapter 10 - The Nursery Window.
Hunter stared at the photograph until the room blurred around her.
Someone had been following her before she knew the Rossi family existed.
Lorenzo took the picture from the wall.
On the back was a handwritten notation.
H.H. - postpartum - viable candidate.
Hunter felt the floor disappear beneath her.
“What does that mean?”
No one answered.
Halloran read the words and looked away too quickly.
Hunter saw it.
“You know.”
“I have an idea.”
“Then say it.”
Halloran hesitated.
“A woman who recently delivered a baby may still be producing milk.”
Hunter’s face went cold.
“They knew about Lily.”
Lorenzo’s eyes darkened.
“They knew before you came here.”
Hunter turned toward him.
“Was I recruited?”
Lorenzo looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel immediately pulled out his phone.
“The staffing agency.”
Hunter’s breathing became shallow.
“I thought I found the job online.”
“You did,” Gabriel said.
“But someone may have made sure you saw it.”
Hunter pressed Leo closer to her chest.
The idea was unbearable.
Her grief, her leaking milk, her empty apartment, even her desperation for cash might have been pieces someone had studied and used.
Lorenzo ripped another photograph from the wall.
It showed Sophia outside St. Gabriel’s with Dr. Halloran.
On the bottom corner someone had written V.C.
Vincent Caruso.
Gabriel opened one of the ledgers.
Pages listed payments to shell companies, security firms, medical contractors, and political consultants.
Several entries were marked with the initials M.R.
Marco Rossi.
Lorenzo’s face became unreadable.
Hunter noticed a smaller notebook tucked behind the ledger.
Inside was a list of dates.
One matched Sophia’s charity gala.
One matched Nicholas Vale’s death.
One matched Hunter’s fall down the stairs.
She stopped breathing.
“No.”
Lorenzo looked over her shoulder.
Tommy’s name appeared beside the date.
Next to it was a payment amount.
Hunter’s hands began to shake.
“He was paid?”
Gabriel took the notebook.
“We do not know what the payment was for.”
“I know what happened that night.”
Hunter’s voice cracked.
“He demanded money.”
“He pushed me.”
“My daughter died.”
Lorenzo’s expression turned lethal.
Hunter stepped in front of him.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“You do not get to decide what happens next.”
“He killed your child.”
“And I want the truth more than I want another grave.”
Lorenzo stared at her for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
A guard ran into the room.
“Mr. Rossi, Marco is gone.”
Lorenzo’s head snapped toward him.
“How?”
“He left through the east gate ten minutes before the lockdown.”
Gabriel looked at the ledger.
“He knew we found this room.”
A crash sounded from somewhere above them.
Then every light in the basement went out.
Hunter held Leo against her.
In the darkness, the mansion’s emergency system began to announce a security breach.
Gabriel checked one more cabinet before leaving the hidden room.
Inside, he found a stack of disposable phones labeled only by dates.
One date matched the night Sophia died.
Another matched the night Hunter was pushed down the stairs.
Lorenzo stared at the labels and understood that the conspiracy had not been a series of desperate decisions.
Someone had planned separate lives on the same calendar.
Sophia.
Leo.
Hunter.
Even Tommy.
People who had never met had been turned into pieces of the same design.
May you like
Then every light in the basement went out.
And from the service tunnel behind them came the sound of someone running toward the cliffs.
