Chapter 16 - Elena Confessed That Lily Had Been Born TwiceThe black car disappeared before Gabriel’s men reached the street.
Rafe returned ten minutes later carrying a broken side mirror and a strip of temporary registration paper. The plate belonged to a delivery van reported stolen in Ashcombe six days earlier.
Beatrice Mercer had not merely anticipated their discovery.
She had prepared for it.
Gabriel ordered Belladonna sealed. No employee left alone. Every room was searched twice, including the old wine tunnels beneath the building.
They found no intruder.
They found something worse.
Inside Lily’s coat pocket was a hospital bracelet.
Elena stared at the faded letters.
INFANT CARTER
FEMALE
TIME OF BIRTH: 2:17 A.M.
Lily touched the plastic band. “This is not mine.”
Elena sat at the private dining table, her face drained of color.
“Yes,” she whispered. “It is.”
Mara placed a recorder between them. “Tell us what happened on the night Lily was born.”
Elena looked toward her daughter.
For years, she had lied to protect Lily from Saint Orison.
Now every lie had become a door Beatrice could open.
“I went into labor early,” Elena said. “There was a storm. The roads were flooded, and the ambulance took me to a private clinic outside Ashcombe.”
“The Mercer clinic?” Tomas asked.
Elena nodded.
She remembered white walls, masked nurses, and a doctor who refused to give his name. She remembered delivering a baby at 2:17 in the morning.
A girl who did not cry.
“They told me she was dead.”
Lily’s fingers tightened around the bracelet.
Elena continued.
Hours later, Beatrice Mercer entered the room carrying a living infant wrapped in a blue blanket.
“She said there had been a mistake. She said the nurse had taken the wrong child.”
Mara’s expression hardened. “And you believed her?”
“I wanted to.”
Elena had held the child and recognized the shape of her mouth, the warmth of her skin, and the tiny curve of her fingers.
But there had been no birthmark beside her ear.
“That appeared when Lily was three,” Elena said. “I thought it was natural.”
Samuel looked at the photograph of Lucy.
“What happened between 2:17 and the time they returned the child?”
“I do not know.”
A quiet voice came from the doorway.
“But Lucy does.”
Rosa stood there holding a folded sheet recovered from the old master ledger. When exposed to heat, faded writing had appeared along the margins.
Two lines were legible.
FIRST TRANSFER FAILED.
SECOND SUBJECT ACCEPTED MATERNAL BOND.
Lily stopped breathing for a moment.
“Second subject?”
Elena reached for her.
Lily stepped away.
“Was I the child you gave birth to?”
“I do not know,” Elena said.
The truth hurt more because it was honest.
Tomas searched the Mercer files by timestamp. At 2:17 a.m. on the night of Lily’s birth, two infant records had been created.
One was labeled LILY CARTER.
The other contained only a number.
The brass token on the table seemed to grow heavier.
Gabriel’s phone vibrated.
A live image had arrived from an unknown number.
It showed Lucy standing inside the white room.
The small girl in the blue coat was beside her now, facing the camera.
She had Lily’s face.
Not similar.
Identical.
May you like
The message beneath the image contained one sentence.
ONE OF THEM WAS BORN. THE OTHER WAS BUILT.
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