Chapter 5 - The Secret Her Father Buried
Sarah did not sleep.
She sat on the edge of the guest-room bed with Daniel's photograph in her hands while Emma dreamed beneath a silk blanket too expensive for their entire apartment.
The handwriting was Daniel's. She recognized the way he pressed too hard on the first letter of every sentence. She recognized the slant of the E in Emma's name.
If I die, protect Emma.
Protect her from whom?
At three in the morning, Alejandro entered without knocking. He carried a locked metal box and dismissed the guard outside.
Sarah rose.
You do not enter a room where my daughter is sleeping without permission.
Alejandro paused.
Few people had spoken to him that way twice and remained employed. Yet he stepped back into the hall, knocked once, and waited.
Sarah almost laughed from disbelief.
Come in.
He placed the box on the small table.
This belonged to your husband.
You had it for eleven months?
Yes.
Why did you not give it to me?
Because its contents concerned my organization.
Your organization. She kept her voice low. You mean the criminal empire that got him killed.
Perhaps.
The honesty disarmed her more than denial would have.
Alejandro unlocked the box. Inside lay a cracked phone, a brass key, three printed photographs, and a child's hospital bracelet.
Emma Parker. Date of birth: October 14.
Sarah picked it up.
Why did Daniel carry this?
Alejandro did not answer. He turned over the photographs.
The first showed Daniel entering the Moretti warehouse six weeks before his death.
The second showed him speaking to Doctor Elias Crane in a parking garage.
The third showed Crane handing Daniel a sealed envelope.
Sarah looked toward the sleeping child.
What was in the envelope?
We never found it.
You think Doctor Crane killed him?
I think your husband discovered something he believed placed Emma in danger.
Sarah remembered Daniel's behavior during his final month. Checking windows. Changing routes to preschool. Insisting Emma's allergy records be kept in a paper folder instead of an online account. At the time, Sarah thought grief over his own father's death had made him anxious.
Why did you investigate him? she asked.
Because he was seen photographing my study.
Was he planning to hurt you?
Alejandro looked at the child.
I do not know.
Sarah touched the brass key.
What does this open?
We have not identified it.
Then why show me now?
Because someone tried to steal the box during the fire.
A sound came from the doorway.
Emma stood there, rubbing her eyes.
Mommy?
Sarah quickly covered the photographs.
Go back to bed, baby.
Emma noticed the hospital bracelet.
That was on me when I was tiny.
Yes.
Daddy kept it in his wallet.
Sarah turned.
No, he did not.
Emma nodded sleepily.
He showed me. He said it was a map.
Alejandro crouched to her level.
A map to where?
Emma squeezed her rabbit.
To the place where I got my special blood.
Sarah's heart stopped for a beat.
What special blood?
Daddy said when I was a baby, bad blood made me sick, and special blood made me better.
Children confused memories with stories. Daniel might have explained a transfusion, an allergy test, or a hospital visit in simple language.
But Alejandro's expression changed.
What hospital was she born in?
St. Anne's Medical Center.
Crane worked there fourteen years ago, Alejandro said.
Emma is four.
He still sits on its private board.
Sarah picked up the bracelet again. Along the inside edge, almost invisible, Daniel had scratched a sequence of numbers.
0414-27-B.
Alejandro photographed it and sent the image to Rocco.
Within minutes, Rocco called back. The sequence matched an archived storage format used by St. Anne's pathology department.
Sample 27, section B, filed April 14.
But Emma was born in October.
The bracelet was not pointing to her birth record.
It was pointing to something stored six months before she was born.
Alejandro ordered a discreet team to access the hospital archive. Sarah insisted on going. He refused. She told him she would walk out alone if necessary.
By four thirty, they were traveling in an armored SUV with Rocco and two guards. Emma remained at the estate under Bianca's protection, surrounded by women Sarah trusted more than the men.
Rain blurred the city windows. Sarah sat opposite Alejandro.
Did you know my husband before the photographs?
No.
Did he ever contact you?
Once. Three days before his death, he called an unlisted number belonging to me. He said he had proof that someone close to me was buying children.
Sarah stared at him.
Buying children?
He would not explain over the phone. We arranged to meet at the warehouse. He died before I arrived.
And you never told me.
I believed whoever killed him might come for you if they knew what he had said.
So you watched us?
Yes.
The answer made her skin crawl.
The apartment across from ours. The man who walked his dog every morning.
One of mine.
The delivery driver who always waited until Emma entered school.
One of mine.
Sarah wanted to strike him. She also understood that his surveillance might have kept them alive.
At St. Anne's, Gabriel had arranged access through a judge who owed the Morettis favors. The pathology archive occupied a basement beneath the oldest wing. Rows of refrigerated cabinets hummed under fluorescent lights.
A nervous records manager located section B.
Sample 27 was gone.
The slot contained only an envelope.
Inside was a photograph of Daniel Parker holding newborn Emma beside a hospital incubator.
Another man stood on the opposite side of the glass.
Alejandro.
Sarah looked at him in horror.
I have never seen this photograph, he said.
You were there.
I was in Sicily the week Emma was born.
On the back, someone had written a message in red ink.
The child saved you once before. Ask your mother what she traded.
May you like
Alejandro's mother had been dead for twelve years.
Or so he had believed.
