Chapter 12 - M-13M-13 was a girl.
Her name was Anna.
Luka told me in the nursery while Mila slept between us, her tiny chest rising and falling under a white blanket.
Maybe he chose that room because lies sounded uglier near a baby.
Or maybe because he wanted to remind himself why truth mattered.
“Anna Bell,” he said. “Born in Albany. Her mother was told she died six hours after birth.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“She was placed with a family connected to the program. When she was four, her adoptive father tried to sell access to her medical records to a private buyer.”
I shut my eyes.
Four years old.
“I found out,” Luka said.
“How?”
“My father.”
I remembered then what Luka was, or what people believed he was.
Moretti.
A name whispered around locked doors.
Not a saint.
Not a savior.
A dangerous man with dangerous blood and a past my father had stepped into.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I took Anna.”
The words were simple.
The meaning was not.
“You kidnapped her?”
“I removed her from a house where she was being drugged for blood draws.”
My anger stumbled.
“Where is she now?”
“Safe.”
“Does her mother know?”
Luka’s silence answered.
I stood so quickly the rocking chair hit the wall.
“No.”
“Claire—”
“No. You don’t get to decide that.”
“I was twenty-five. I had no legal proof. If I exposed Anna, the Ashfords would have found her. Her mother was unstable, addicted, homeless—”
“Because they told her baby died!”
My voice rose.
Mila stirred.
I lowered it with effort.
“You saved the child and left the mother grieving.”
Pain crossed Luka’s face.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
His voice cracked on the word.
For a moment, I saw the nineteen-year-old in the photograph. The boy my father saved. The boy who grew into a man powerful enough to protect children, but not always gentle enough to save the people attached to them.
“Where is Anna?” I asked.
“In Maine. With a family your father trusted.”
“My father knew?”
“He arranged it before he died.”
That stopped me.
Luka took a folded photograph from his wallet.
A teenage girl stood on a beach, laughing into the wind. Dark hair. Bright eyes. Alive.
“She’s sixteen now,” he said. “She knows she was hidden. She doesn’t know everything.”
“And her mother?”
“I send money through a trust.”
“That is not the same as giving her child back.”
“No.”
At least he did not defend it.
That made it harder to hate him.
I looked at Mila.
“How do I know you won’t decide what’s best for my daughter too?”
Luka stepped back like I had struck him.
“You don’t,” he said.
The honesty hurt more than reassurance would have.
“I want to promise you I would never cross that line,” he continued. “But I crossed lines before and called it protection.”
My eyes burned.
“Then why should I trust you?”
“Because I am telling you where the bodies are buried before you find them yourself.”
The room went silent.
Then Mara appeared at the door.
“Claire,” she said carefully, “there’s someone downstairs.”
My body tensed.
“Derek?”
“No.”
She looked at Luka.
“It’s a girl. Sixteen. Says her name is Anna Bell.”
Luka turned sharply.
May you like
Mara swallowed.
“She says she wants to meet the woman whose baby is M-17.”
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