Chapter 6 - The Empty GraveThey left the estate through a concealed garage beneath the kitchen.
Matteo drove a black sedan through the rain while Liana sat in the back with Nico. The baby had stopped screaming, but he was dangerously quiet. His skin was pale. Every few minutes, Liana touched two fingers to his neck to feel his pulse.
“He’s weaker,” she said.
“We’ll reach the clinic in ten minutes.”
“We have six.”
Matteo glanced at her in the mirror.
“What?”
“His breathing is slowing.”
The sedan surged forward.
Rain swept across the windshield. Traffic scattered as Matteo forced his way through the city. He drove like a man who had spent years outrunning death, but his hands shook once on the steering wheel.
“Tell me about Nora,” he said.
Liana looked down at the baby.
“Why?”
“You said she had the mark.”
“She loved music.”
Matteo said nothing.
“I sang to her every night. She stopped crying whenever I hummed. Not because I had a good voice. I don’t. She just knew me.”
Liana’s throat tightened.
“On the last night, I went to get water. When I came back, she was struggling to breathe. The ambulance took twenty-three minutes.”
“Why?”
“Because the dispatcher said there was a mistake with the address.”
Matteo’s eyes met hers in the mirror.
“That was not a mistake.”
“I know that now.”
The clinic was hidden beneath an abandoned train station. Matteo parked behind a rusted maintenance building, carried Nico through a steel door, and led them down a staircase lit by emergency lamps.
A woman in a white coat rushed toward them.
She was younger than Liana expected, with dark curls tied at the nape of her neck and Matteo’s sharp gray eyes.
“Put him on the table,” she ordered.
“I’m Dr. Elena Varric,” she told Liana while attaching monitors to Nico. “You’re the maid?”
“I’m the person who noticed the mark.”
Elena looked at the violet line. Her expression changed.
“It’s spreading.”
“Can you treat it?” Matteo asked.
“I can stabilize him. I cannot remove whatever is inside his system without knowing the compound.”
“Kessler said it affects memory.”
Elena froze. “He spoke to you?”
“He shot at us.”
“Then we have a bigger problem.”
Elena drew blood from Nico’s heel. The baby cried once, then went limp against the blanket.
Liana gripped the edge of the table. “Why did he say the drug affects memory?”
Elena looked at Matteo.
“Tell her.”
He remained silent.
“Matteo,” Elena said sharply.
“Tell me what?” Liana demanded.
Elena threw down the syringe. “Sofia discovered that Kessler was testing a neural compound on newborns. It was designed to strengthen memory pathways. The problem was that it also made infants vulnerable to suggestion.”
“Suggestion?”
“Fear responses. Attachment. Recognition. A child could be trained to calm only for a particular person, panic around a certain voice, or respond to a sound buried beneath consciousness.”
Liana looked at Nico. “So he was conditioned.”
“Possibly.”
“Why does he calm with me?”
Elena’s eyes moved to her face. “Because you may smell like someone he remembers.”
“His mother?”
“Or someone who handled him at the hospital.”
Liana thought of clove oil, blue lights, and the tiny monitor sound. “My daughter was treated with the same drug.”
Elena stopped.
“Who told you she received it?”
“I saw her name in the ledger.”
“What was her name?”
“Nora Graves.”
Elena’s face went pale.
She crossed to a locked cabinet and pulled out a thin black file. “I knew that name.”
Liana opened the file. Inside was Nora’s hospital photograph.
Not a death certificate. Not a medical chart.
An intake photograph.
Nora lay beneath a blue light, wearing a tiny white cap. The violet mark showed beneath her ear.
At the bottom of the image was a timestamp from three weeks earlier than the date Liana had been told she died.
Liana stopped breathing.
“This was taken before her transfer,” Elena said. “Kessler sent the image to Sofia. Sofia believed Nora was being moved between facilities.”
“My daughter died at St. Agnes,” Liana whispered.
“According to the records, yes.”
“Then why is she in this file?”
Elena looked toward Matteo. “Because Sofia asked me to investigate. She believed babies marked with the crescent were not being treated. They were being cataloged.”
“Cataloged for what?”
“For replacement.”
The room went silent except for the beeping monitor.
“Replacement of what?” Liana asked.
Elena opened a second file. Inside were photographs of newborns beside photographs of wealthy families.
“Some babies were born with illnesses. Some families wanted heirs who would never inherit. Some powerful people wanted to hide an inconvenient child. Kessler’s network altered records, moved infants, and created false deaths.”
Liana looked at the photographs.
“They stole babies.”
“Yes.”
“Was Nico stolen?”
Elena’s eyes lowered.
“We don’t know.”
Matteo struck the metal cabinet so hard it bent.
“My son is not a file.”
Nico’s monitor alarmed.
Elena rushed to him. “His heart rate is dropping.”
She injected a clear medication into his IV line. Liana held his tiny hand and began humming through her tears.
The song was the same one she had sung to Nora.
Within seconds, Nico’s heartbeat steadied.
Elena stared at the monitor.
“He responds to your voice,” she said.
“Why?”
“Maybe because he heard it in the hospital.”
“I never met him there.”
“Perhaps you met him without knowing.”
Liana looked at Matteo. “Were Sofia and I at St. Agnes at the same time?”
Matteo did not answer.
Elena did.
“Yes.”
Liana’s fingers went cold.
“When?”
“The week Nico was born. You were a night attendant in the neonatal wing.”
“I was not a night attendant. I cleaned there.”
“You cleaned the private rooms.”
Memory flashed through Liana’s mind: a crying newborn behind a glass wall, a woman in a blue hospital gown reaching helplessly toward the nursery, a nurse telling Liana to leave the hall.
Sofia.
Liana had seen her.
She had heard someone sing.
Not Sofia.
Liana had been humming to Nora in the supply room, trying to calm her own baby while mopping the floor.
Nico had been in the next room.
“He knows my song,” Liana whispered.
Matteo looked at her as if the world had shifted beneath him.
Suddenly, every light in the clinic went out.
Elena swore.
Emergency lamps flickered red.
From the staircase above came the sound of slow applause.
“Beautiful,” a man called. “The dead mother found the living child.”
Matteo reached for his gun.
Liana turned toward the stairs.
A tall man descended into the red light. He wore a dark coat, leather gloves, and a smile almost identical to Matteo’s.
Dante Varric.
In his hand was a photograph.
He held it up for Liana to see.
It showed a tiny grave beneath gray skies.
May you like
The name carved into the stone was NORA GRAVES.
“You should visit the cemetery again,” Dante said. “You may be surprised by what is missing.”
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