Chapter 6 - The Vanishing Midwife Of Mercy Memorial
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The twin engines of Luca Moretti’s Gulfstream G650 roared with a deep, bone-rattling vibration as the jet climbed steeply into the stormy black skies over Lake Michigan.
Below us, the amber grid of Chicago became a smeared tapestry of distant light through the rain-streaked oval windows. I sat frozen in a wide cream leather recliner, still wearing my worn brown coat over the gray uniform dress that smelled of spilled champagne and hospital disinfectant. In my lap, my fingers were locked around the worn gray bunny with the faded purple ink on its tag: *Sophia*.
Across the polished cherrywood conference table sat Luca Moretti.
He had changed out of his soot-stained dress shirt into a black cashmere sweater and dark tailored trousers, but the dangerous edge surrounding him had only sharpened. Beside him, Marco had set up two ruggedized satellite laptops displaying real-time flight telemetry, encrypted wire transfers, and a live secure camera feed linked to Daniel’s room on the fourth floor of St. Catherine’s Memorial Hospital.
On that small screen, I could see my husband.
Daniel’s face was bruised and pale beneath the fluorescent lights, but the thick respirator tube had been removed from his throat. A clear nasal cannula supplied oxygen, and his eyes—the warm, tired hazel eyes that had held me through every dark winter—were open. Two of Luca’s armed security guards stood like iron statues inside the room, their hands folded over their weapons, while a private trauma surgeon monitored the drip lines.
Before the jet had pulled away from the private hangar at O’Hare, Marco had handed me the satellite phone.
I remembered Daniel’s raspy, cracked voice cutting through the static:
*“Rachel... baby, did you hear me? Did you find her bunny?”*
I had sobbed so hard into the receiver I couldn't draw breath. *“I found it, Daniel. I have it right here in my hands. Mr. Moretti is taking me to Switzerland. We’re going to get our little girl.”*
*“Don't let them hide her again, Rachel,”* Daniel had whispered, his monitor beeping in the background as his heart rate spiked with emotion. *“The woman at the gate... she had files... she had photographs. Sophia has your smile, Rachel. She has that tiny dimple on her left cheek. Bring our daughter home.”*
*“I will, Daniel. I swear on my life I will. You rest. You stay alive for us.”*
Now, six miles above the Atlantic Ocean, the reality of what we were chasing began to unravel in cold, sickening detail.
“Boss,” Marco said, tapping his keyboard. “We located Sister Beatrice. The night midwife who was on duty in Labor and Delivery at Mercy Memorial the night Sophia was born.”
Luca lifted his espresso cup, his obsidian eyes narrowing into slits. “Where is she?”
“She isn't in Chicago,” Marco answered, turning the laptop toward Luca and me. “Six weeks after the alleged fire in the neonatal unit, Beatrice Vance resigned from the hospital, surrendered her nursing license, and purchased a four-bedroom villa in Sarasota, Florida, with a cashier's check for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The payment was drawn from an offshore shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands called 'Bellini Maritime Logistics.'”
My stomach churned with violent disgust. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That was the price of my baby’s life to them.”
“That was merely the down payment, Mrs. Bennett,” Marco replied gravely. “Sister Beatrice wasn't just a bystander. She was the one who personally disconnected Sophia’s incubator telemetry to simulate sudden cardiac arrest. She was the one who wheeled the empty incubator into the service bay and handed your swaddled daughter directly into Clarissa’s arms at the emergency loading dock.”
“Where is Beatrice Vance right now?” Luca asked. His voice was low, devoid of inflection, which meant someone was standing on the edge of a precipice.
“Our Miami crew picked her up from her home two hours ago, boss,” Marco said. “She is currently sitting in a secure holding room inside our freight warehouse at the Port of Tampa. She thought she was being raided by federal agents until the boys placed a picture of Vanessa Bellini on the table. She broke within forty seconds.”
Luca tapped a speaker button on the satellite console. “Put her on.”
A burst of static crackled through the cabin speakers, followed by the muffled, panicked weeping of an older woman.
“Speak,” Luca commanded.
*“Please!”* the woman cried out, her voice trembling with sheer terror. *“Please don't kill me! I didn't want to do it! It was Miss Bellini’s assistant! Clarissa said if I didn't help switch the child, they would tell the medical board about my prescription thefts! They threatened my grandchildren!”*
“You took seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Beatrice,” Luca said, his voice dropping like an anvil into the speaker. “You do not get to play the victim. Tell the mother sitting across from me exactly what happened in Room 304 on February fourteenth.”
A sharp intake of breath came over the satellite link. *“The... the mother is there?”*
“I am here,” I said, leaning toward the microphone, my knuckles turning white against the polished wood. “I am Rachel Bennett. The woman who begged you on her knees to let me see my baby’s body before you put her in the bag. You looked me in the eyes, Beatrice. You held my hand and told me God needed another angel in heaven.”
A loud, retching sob came from the speaker. *“May God forgive me, Mrs. Bennett... I am so sorry. I think about your face every night before I sleep.”*
“I don't want your remorse,” I hissed, venom coating every syllable. “I want the truth. Did you hurt her? Did you drug my baby?”
*“No! Never! I swear on my mother’s grave, the baby was completely healthy!”* Beatrice wailed. *“She was small—only five pounds after the fluid loss—but her lungs were strong! She was crying when she was born! Clarissa brought in a pre-warmed transport bassinet with portable oxygen. We gave Sophia a mild pediatric sedative—only five milligrams of oral diphenhydramine to keep her quiet during the drive through the security checkpoints—and switched the monitors in Room 304 to a flatline playback tape.”*
“And the baby in the casket?” I asked, tears burning my eyes again. “The baby we buried at Oakridge?”
*“There was no baby in that casket,”* Beatrice sobbed. *“The hospital administrator, Dr. Henderson, had an arrangement with a pet cremation service near the railyards. They filled a sealed biohazard urn with incinerated bone meal from euthanized animals, sealed it with lead solder so you couldn't open it without a blowtorch, and handed it to the mortuary van. You were burying six pounds of crushed gravel and animal ash.”*
Luca reached forward and slammed his fist down on the console, severing the satellite connection. The sudden silence in the cabin was so loud it made my ears ring.
He turned his gaze toward me. In those dark, fathomless eyes, there was no longer any trace of the cold, distant mafia lord who presided over backroom deals. There was an ocean of profound, agonizing guilt.
“Three years, Rachel,” Luca whispered, his voice cracking slightly. “For three years, I paid for Vanessa’s charity galas, I paid for her jewelry, I brought her into my father’s house. I sat beside her in church every Easter. And all the while, she had taken your daughter and hidden her across an ocean like a stolen painting.”
“Why Switzerland, Mr. Moretti?” I asked, looking up at him through my tears. “Why didn't Vanessa just keep her in Chicago? If she wanted an heir to prove she could marry you, why didn't she bring Sophia into your home?”
Luca leaned back against the leather seat, staring up at the cabin ceiling where the faint reflection of the instrument panels danced.
“Because Sophia was too dangerous to keep close,” Luca said quietly. “Vanessa realized within four months that the lie was unmanageable. If I had been in Chicago, I would have insisted on introducing our daughter to our family physicians. I would have brought my mother’s pediatrician to examine her. And above all else, Rachel... Vanessa knew that my family’s enemies conduct genetic verifications before any child is entered into the Moretti syndicate trust.”
Marco nodded in agreement from the opposite seat. “If Miss Bellini had presented Sophia as Luca’s biological daughter, the commission would have demanded a formal buccal swab test administered by the family’s consiglieres in New York. If the DNA failed, the Bellini family would have been wiped out overnight for attempting to usurp the bloodline.”
“So she stashed her,” I whispered, hugging the gray bunny tighter against my chest. “Like an insurance policy.”
“Precisely,” Luca said, his jaw tightening into iron. “Vanessa planned to keep Sophia hidden in the Swiss Alps until our marriage was officially signed and sealed. Under our families' contract, once the marriage was registered under Illinois and Italian law, the Bellini family was guaranteed forty percent of our maritime holdings, regardless of whether there was a surviving heir.”
“And once she had your name and your money?” I asked, a cold dread creeping into my spine. “What was she going to do with Sophia then?”
Luca didn't answer. He looked at Marco.
Marco swallowed hard, his weathered face grim. “Mrs. Bennett... when Clarissa was interrogated by our local team before she escaped, she admitted that Miss Bellini had already signed transfer papers for a private adoption agency operating out of Bucharest, Romania.”
The blood drained from my face. “Bucharest?”
“The Swiss boarding nursery is only authorized to keep children until their fourth birthday,” Marco said quietly. “Sophia turns three in February. In eleven months, Vanessa intended to have Clarissa forge international orphan documentation and transfer Sophia to an untraceable private estate in Eastern Europe. You would have never seen your daughter again. No police force in the world would have ever found her.”
I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead against the cool leather of the table.
In the dark behind my eyelids, I saw Daniel’s face again.
I saw him lying broken against the limestone wall outside the Moretti mansion, bleeding from his lungs, his ribs crushed, refusing to let go of the gate until he had delivered his final message.
If Daniel hadn't driven to the mansion tonight... if he hadn't seen Clarissa creeping through the dark with that lockbox... my little girl would have vanished forever into the shadows of the European black market.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said, opening my eyes and looking directly into his obsidian gaze.
“Yes, Rachel?”
“When we land in Switzerland... do whatever you have to do. Just get my baby back.”
Luca’s lips curved into a cold, terrifying smile that sent a shiver straight down to my boots.
May you like
“Rachel,” he said softly. “You have worked in my house for eleven months. You have seen me sign shipping manifests and pour wine for corrupt senators. But tonight, you are going to see why three generations of men have feared the name Moretti.”
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