Chapter 9 - LILYThe drive to Connecticut happened in a silence so sharp it cut.
Hunter sat in the back of the SUV with Lorenzo beside her, Dr. Halloran across from them, and a convoy of armed men before and behind. Rain streaked the windows. The world outside blurred into gray roads and dark trees.
No one tried to comfort her.
That was good.
Comfort would have broken her.
She stared at her hands, the same hands that had held a silent baby for twenty-seven minutes. The same hands that had folded pink onesies into a drawer. The same hands that had scrubbed Lorenzo Rossi’s brass handles while her milk soaked bandages meant to hide a body still trying to mother.
If Lily was alive, who had she buried?
The question circled like a vulture.
Dr. Halloran finally spoke.
“Newborn trafficking networks sometimes use fetal remains from legitimate losses to support false documentation.”
Hunter looked up slowly.
He regretted the words instantly.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t soften it now,” she said. “Not after telling me my daughter may have been sold.”
Lorenzo’s voice was low.
“We do not know yet.”
Hunter turned on him.
“Don’t.”
His face remained still.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make hope behave. Don’t make it polite. Don’t make it wait in a chair until men finish checking facts.”
He absorbed that.
Then he nodded.
“You’re right.”
The clinic sat beyond a private gate in a wooded town where everything looked expensive enough to be innocent.
Northbridge Maternal Wellness Center.
The sign was white and tasteful. The building had wide windows, fresh landscaping, and a stone fountain in front. It looked like a place where wealthy women recovered from childbirth with herbal tea and ocean-sound machines.
It was also surrounded within minutes by Lorenzo’s men.
Inside, the lobby smelled of lavender.
A receptionist looked up with a customer-service smile that collapsed when Marco placed a tablet in front of her showing Paula’s photograph.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“I can’t disclose patient—”
Lorenzo walked in.
The receptionist stopped talking.
Some men did not need introductions.
A doctor in a cashmere cardigan appeared from a hallway.
“Mr. Rossi,” she said, too quickly.
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
“You know me.”
“I know of you.”
“Then you know this can go one of two ways.”
The doctor swallowed.
Hunter stepped past Lorenzo.
“Where is the baby?”
The woman looked at her.
Something like pity moved across her face.
Hunter hated it.
“Where is my daughter?”
The doctor’s mouth opened.
A baby cried down the hall.
Hunter ran.
She heard Lorenzo behind her, heard shoes on polished floors, heard someone shouting for security. None of it mattered.
The cry came from a room marked Observation Suite 3.
Hunter pushed through the door.
Paula stood beside a bassinet.
The night nurse. The woman who had drugged Leo. The woman from the hospital footage.
She looked thinner, wild-eyed, trapped.
In the bassinet lay a baby girl wrapped in a pale yellow blanket.
Hunter stopped.
The room fell away.
The baby had dark hair.
A tiny crease between her brows.
A rose-colored mark beneath her left ear.
Hunter knew that mark.
She had kissed it in the hospital.
Once.
Before they took her away.
“Lily,” she whispered.
The baby turned toward her voice.
Hunter made a sound no one in that room would ever forget.
Paula began crying.
“I didn’t hurt her,” she said. “I swear I didn’t hurt her.”
Hunter moved to the bassinet.
Lorenzo reached the door and stopped his men with one raised hand.
No one entered.
No one breathed too loudly.
Hunter lifted the baby.
She was warm.
Heavy.
Alive.
Lily opened her mouth and cried against Hunter’s chest.
Hunter collapsed into the chair, holding her daughter so tightly Dr. Halloran had to gently say her name.
“Hunter. Let me check her breathing.”
“No.”
“I won’t take her.”
“No.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
His voice was quieter than anyone expected.
“No one is taking her.”
Hunter looked at him through tears.
He looked back, and something passed between them. Not romance. Not yet. Not anything so simple.
A recognition.
Two parents who had stood over empty cribs and been told to accept what powerful people had done.
Paula sank against the wall.
“They made me do it.”
Lorenzo’s gaze turned lethal.
“Who?”
“Bianca. Northbridge. Dr. Kline. I owed money. My brother owed money. They said it was just paperwork at first. Then babies. Then Leo.”
Hunter looked up.
“Why Leo?”
Paula wept harder.
“Bianca said he was born into the wrong hands. She said if he died, the Bellini assets would return where they belonged. She said he was sick anyway.”
“He wasn’t sick,” Hunter said. “You made him sick.”
Paula covered her face.
“I know.”
Dr. Halloran examined Lily while Hunter held her. Healthy. Slightly underweight. Mild dehydration. Nothing irreversible.
Nothing dead.
Hunter laughed and sobbed at the same time.
Lily rooted against her.
Hunter froze.
Her milk let down painfully, instantly.
She looked at Lorenzo.
He understood before she spoke.
“Feed her,” he said.
“What about Leo?”
“He has milk stored from this morning. And I will get you back to him.”
Hunter looked down at her daughter.
For three weeks her body had been calling for this child.
This time, when Lily latched, Hunter broke.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
She sobbed over her baby while Lily drank with the fierce little hunger of a child stolen from everything familiar but not from life.
Lorenzo turned away, giving her privacy.
But Hunter saw his shoulders shake once.
Only once.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
Hunter’s joy chilled.
“What?” she asked.
Lorenzo looked at her, then at Lily.
“Bianca escaped.”
The room froze.
Marco cursed under his breath.
“How?” Hunter asked.
Lorenzo’s voice was controlled rage.
“She was moved from the wine cellar for medical treatment. The ambulance was intercepted.”
Paula began shaking.
“She’ll come here.”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“No. She will run.”
Paula shook her head.
“You don’t understand. Bianca never runs from what she thinks belongs to her.”
Outside, somewhere beyond the clinic walls, a car alarm began to scream.
Then another.
Then the lights went out.
Hunter pulled Lily close.
Lorenzo drew his gun.
From the hallway, a woman’s voice called softly.
“Lorenzo.”
Bianca.
Hunter stood, Lily in her arms.
Lorenzo moved in front of her.
Bianca’s voice floated closer through the dark.
“You have something of mine.”
Hunter looked down at her daughter.
Then toward the hallway.
“No,” she whispered.
Lorenzo heard her.
May you like
His answer was colder than winter.
“Not anymore.”
