Chapter 2 - The Black Signature.
The service stairwell smelled of bleach, hot metal, and rain drifting through an open loading door six floors below.
Every step tore through my exhausted body.
Luka kept one hand under my arm without ever trying to take Ava from me.
June ran ahead, stripping off her hospital badge and crushing it beneath her shoe.
“Why did the system say my baby was dead?”
“Because dead children cannot be stolen,” Luka said.
“They can only disappear.”
My foot slipped on the fifth-floor landing.
Luka caught both Ava and me before either of us hit the rail.
“You knew this would happen.”
“I knew they would move quickly.”
“Who are they?”
He looked upward as boots thundered into the stairwell.
“The people your husband works for.”
We reached the loading dock as an ambulance reversed across the exit and blocked our path.
June pulled open a laundry chute door instead.
Behind it was a narrow maintenance passage leading toward the parking garage.
“My father showed me these tunnels when this wing was built,” she said.
Luka stared at her.
“Your father designed St. Catherine's?”
“He designed the places where frightened people could vanish.”
We emerged behind a row of delivery vans.
A black SUV waited with its rear door open.
I stopped again.
The plate was covered, the windows were dark, and the driver looked as dangerous as Luka.
“I am not getting into that car.”
Luka removed his phone and placed it in my hand.
On the screen was a live feed from the hospital's south entrance.
Grant stood beneath the awning beside Vivian and three private security guards.
One guard asked whether they should bring me back alive.
Grant answered without hesitation.
“The infant is essential.”
“The mother is optional.”
My husband had spoken softly, but the microphone caught every word.
I climbed into Luka's vehicle.
The SUV moved before the door had fully closed.
Two gray sedans followed us out of the garage.
Luka's driver accelerated through the wet downtown streets while June pressed gauze against the blood spreading beneath my gown.
“You're hemorrhaging,” she warned.
“I am not going back.”
“No one is taking you back,” Luka said.
One sedan struck our rear bumper.
Ava woke and screamed.
The sound changed everything inside the car.
Luka's men reached beneath their jackets, but he raised one hand.
“No shooting near the baby.”
The driver turned into an underground construction tunnel, killed the headlights, and slid behind a concrete barrier.
The pursuing cars raced past the hidden entrance.
Ten minutes later, we entered the basement of a narrow brownstone on the far side of the river.
The second floor contained medical equipment, formula, diapers, and a bassinet that had already been warmed.
Someone had prepared for Ava before I had gone into labor.
“You expected us,” I said.
Luka did not deny it.
“Your father expected this twenty-five years ago.”
My father had drowned when I was twelve.
His body had never been recovered.
Before I could demand an explanation, my phone lit up with a hospital notification.
We regret to confirm the loss of your infant, Ava Hale.
The message included instructions for collecting her remains.
I looked down at my living daughter.
Her small chest rose beneath my palm.
“They are making me insane on paper.”
“That is how they win custody before a courtroom ever opens,” June said.
Luka took out a copy of the certificate he had signed.
“I put my name there to force a second legal record into existence.”
“You don't get to make yourself her father.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“But I can make it harder for them to pretend she never had one.”
An alert appeared on the television.
Police were searching for an armed kidnapper named Luka Moretti and a mentally distressed mother who had removed a deceased infant from St. Catherine's Hospital.
Then the screen showed my wedding photograph.
Grant stood beside me in the picture, smiling like a grieving husband.
May you like
At the bottom of the broadcast, a second line appeared.
Emergency custody awarded to Grant Hale pending recovery of Baby M-17.
