Chapter 11 - THE FOURTH HEIRThey did not fly commercial.
Elena learned that men like Caden Voss did not wait in airports, remove shoes for security, or sit under fluorescent lights beside people eating pretzels out of paper bags. Within forty minutes of leaving Rosehaven, they were on a private jet cutting south through gray clouds toward New Orleans.
Elena sat by the window, staring at nothing.
Mila.
The name kept repeating in her mind.
A daughter hidden for fourteen months. A baby who might have learned a different smell, a different voice, a different set of arms. A child whose first word might not be Mama, because Elena had never been allowed close enough for her heart to teach it.
Across from her, Caden read the medical transport documents Margot had given them. Ortega worked beside him on a secure tablet. Two guards sat farther back, silent.
Detective Shaw had stayed behind to secure Ruth Bell, Vivian, Gary, and whatever remained of St. Augustine’s records. He had argued about jurisdiction. Caden had ignored him until Shaw finally said, “Bring me something I can use in court, not a body I have to explain.”
Caden had replied, “I’ll bring you both if necessary.”
Elena had not laughed.
Now she watched the clouds and wondered how much violence could happen before justice stopped being justice.
“You’re afraid of me,” Caden said.
She did not turn.
“I’m afraid of what you might do before we find her.”
“I won’t endanger Mila.”
The name sounded strange in his mouth. Tender and unfamiliar.
Elena looked at him then.
“Do you feel anything?”
His eyes lifted from the papers.
“For Mila?”
“For any of this.” Her voice sharpened. “For me. For what happened. For the fact that your world swallowed my life and called it security.”
Caden set the papers down.
“I feel more than I can afford.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It is not.”
“No? Because you get to sit there like stone while I fall apart.”
His jaw flexed.
“Do you want me to fall apart?”
“I want to know there’s something human inside you.”
The plane hummed around them.
Ortega looked down at his tablet very intensely.
Caden leaned back. For a moment, Elena thought he would shut her out.
Instead, he said, “After Seraphina died, I stopped entering the nursery wing.”
Elena went still.
“I hired people. Paid experts. Read reports. Watched monitors. I convinced myself providing was the same as raising.” His eyes dropped to his hands. “When the children cried, I told myself babies cried. When they refused touch, I told myself specialists knew better. When Nico stopped making sounds altogether, I signed another check.”
Elena’s anger did not vanish.
But it found something beside itself.
Pity, maybe. Small and unwilling.
“That was neglect,” she said.
“Yes.”
She had not expected him to agree.
He continued, “I do not deserve forgiveness from them.”
“No,” Elena said. “You don’t.”
Ortega glanced up.
Caden nodded once. “But I will earn safety, if nothing else.”
Elena looked back out the window.
“Start by not killing anyone in front of me.”
A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth. “A difficult but reasonable boundary.”
Despite herself, Elena almost smiled.
Almost.
The jet landed outside New Orleans just after sunset.
The city felt different immediately. Warm air. Wet pavement. Music somewhere far away. A sweetness in the air that made Elena think of flowers and rot.
Their first stop was a private pediatric facility listed on the transport record, but the building was empty. Not abandoned. Cleaned.
Too cleaned.
No files. No computers. No staff.
Only one thing remained in the examination room at the back.
A child’s red sock.
Elena picked it up with trembling hands.
It was impossibly small.
Caden stood beside her, face hard.
“She was here,” Elena whispered.
Ortega entered. “Security feed wiped. But exterior cameras from the bakery across the street caught a black ambulance leaving yesterday.”
Caden turned. “Plate?”
“Stolen.”
“Route?”
“Working on it.”
Elena held the sock to her chest.
Yesterday.
They had missed her by one day.
Her knees weakened, but this time she did not fall.
“What else?” Caden asked.
Ortega hesitated.
Elena looked at him. “Say it.”
“The ambulance headed toward the river district. One known Crane associate operates out of an old convent there.”
Caden’s expression shifted.
“Elena stays at the hotel.”
“No,” Elena said instantly.
Caden looked at her.
She stepped closer. “Do not start.”
“This is not a nursery. This is an extraction.”
“My daughter is there.”
“And if she is not?”
“Then I need to see the place that took her.”
Caden’s face hardened. “You could get hurt.”
“I have been hurt.”
“You could die.”
Elena’s voice dropped.
“Then for once, let me die looking for my child instead of mourning one I was told I lost.”
The words struck him.
He looked away first.
The old convent stood near the river, its iron fence swallowed by vines, its stained-glass windows boarded from the inside. No lights shone. No music reached that street. Even New Orleans seemed to hold its breath around it.
Caden’s men entered first.
Quiet.
Precise.
No gunfire.
No shouting.
Elena waited in the SUV for exactly twelve seconds before opening her door.
Caden caught her at the gate.
“Elena.”
“Don’t.”
A crash sounded inside.
Then a baby cried.
Elena ran.
She heard Caden curse behind her, then footsteps.
Inside, the convent smelled like dust, candle wax, and antiseptic. Elena followed the cry down a hallway, through a room lined with old medical equipment, and into a chapel where saints watched from cracked walls.
At the altar, a woman stood holding a toddler girl.
The child had dark curls.
Hazel eyes.
One red sock.
Elena stopped breathing.
The woman holding her smiled.
“Hello, Elena,” she said.
Caden entered behind her and went utterly still.
Elena whispered, “Who are you?”
The woman lowered her sunglasses.
May you like
Her eyes were cold.
“I’m the woman who signed your name.”
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