Chapter 9 - What Marissa Saw
Marissa Bell arrived at the police station with a lawyer, a canvas tote bag, and the exhausted face of someone who had spent years waiting for a door to be kicked open.
I was not allowed into her formal interview. Kim was right to keep the process clean, but waiting in the hallway felt like punishment. I sat beside a vending machine and counted the minutes between the baby's kicks.
Leonardo brought me water. “You can go home.”
“I can. I'm choosing not to.”
He sat down beside me. We had become better at that: letting the other person make a choice without trying to take it away.
Two hours later Kim emerged. “Marissa has provided documents and a detailed statement. There are things I can share, and things I can't.”
“Did she know Lily?” I asked.
“She remembers a child matching Lily's age and description. She believes that child was transferred out of the clinic under a false discharge order.”
“Alive?”
“At the time of the transfer, yes.”
I covered my mouth. The word was both a gift and a knife. Alive then did not mean safe now.
Kim explained that Marissa had once challenged a supervisor about missing records. Soon afterward, her young son needed an expensive procedure. A foundation connected to the Romano trust paid the hospital bill, then used that payment to pressure her into silence. Matteo had discovered the arrangement and quietly arranged independent medical support for the boy. He had also urged Marissa to keep copies of everything.
“He didn't tell me,” I whispered.
“He was protecting his source,” Kim said. “It doesn't mean he didn't trust you.”
I thought of our small kitchen and all the nights he came home looking tired. I had imagined ordinary worries. I wished he had trusted me enough to share the danger. I also understood why he had not wanted it in our apartment.
The recovered records identified a physician who had signed multiple false death certificates: Dr. Evelyn Hart. They also showed payments routed through an entity called Northbridge Family Services. Kim said the organization had operated under different names in three states. Investigators were contacting the relevant agencies and searching for children without exposing their identities.
“What about Richard?” Leonardo asked.
“He is under investigation. We are not announcing charges until the evidence supports them.”
“And Bianca?”
“Her attorney has contacted us. She says she wants to make a statement.”
I nearly laughed. “Now?”
Kim looked at me carefully. “You don't have to forgive her to let us hear what she knows.”
That afternoon Bianca appeared at the mansion gates, not in red satin but in a plain wool coat. Security did not let her enter. She asked to speak to me through the intercom.
Leonardo offered to have her removed. I told him to wait, then asked Anthony to join me. We spoke through the gate, with a camera recording and enough distance that she could not reach me.
“I didn't know about the children at first,” Bianca said.
I felt my jaw tighten. “At first.”
“My father told me the clinic handled private adoptions. I thought it was legal. Then I saw a file marked deceased and another marked placed for the same child.”
“Why didn't you go to the police?”
“He said he'd ruin my mother. He said the accounts were in her name.”
“Did that make you force me to work while I was pregnant?”
She looked down. “No.”
“Did it make you call me a liar in front of everyone?”
“No.”
“Then don't use your father to explain what you did to me.”
Tears filled her eyes. “You're right.”
It was the first honest thing I had heard from her.
Bianca reached into her purse, and the guard stepped forward. She stopped immediately. “It's a flash drive. My lawyer has another copy. I want Anthony to give it to the police.”
Anthony accepted it through the gate using a sealed evidence bag. He did not promise her protection or forgiveness.
Before she left, Bianca looked at me. “There's something you should know about Matteo's crash. My father didn't order it alone.”
“Who else?” I asked.
She glanced toward the road, suddenly frightened. “The man who ran the clinic's transfers. He used a different name with us.”
“What name?”
“Adrian Vale.”
Kim called ten minutes later. The name was an alias connected to Northbridge Family Services. A recent photograph showed Vale standing outside a hospital in Wisconsin.
May you like
He was the third man in Matteo's parking-garage photograph.
And he had been seen at my apartment after the funeral.
