Chapter 7 - THE DOCTOR'S SECOND PHONE
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Dr. Samuel Reed arrived at the mansion just after midnight, carrying his medical bag and wearing the exhausted expression of a physician called away from bed.
Rocco was waiting in the medical suite.
“You accessed the hospital records.”
Dr. Reed stopped.
“Who told you that?”
“Your login. Your credentials. Your device.”
“I was checking the bracelet number.”
“Then why did you delete the search history?”
The doctor set down his bag.
“Because someone contacted me and warned me to stop investigating.”
“Who?”
“I don't know. The call came from a blocked number.”
Rocco placed a phone on the table.
“Listen carefully. You have one chance to tell me everything you know.”
Dr. Reed stared at the phone.
Then he reached into his pocket and removed a second device.
“I recorded the call.”
The recording began with a woman's voice, distorted but recognizable.
The Moretti family cannot learn the child's identity. If they do, the arrangement fails.
Dr. Reed's voice followed.
The child is medically stable. He needs a legitimate guardian.
The woman replied:
He needs to disappear.
Rocco's face darkened.
The recording ended with a sharp click.
“Can you identify her?” Rocco asked.
“Not with certainty. But she used a phrase I heard before.”
“What phrase?”
“Second envelope.”
Rocco immediately thought of Sophia's testimony.
The woman outside the kitchen had used the same words.
Dominic entered carrying a printout from the foundation's financial records. A payment had been issued to a private courier service on the night the baby was abandoned.
The recipient's name was hidden behind a corporate account.
However, the delivery instructions contained a location: the old Bellmont Foundation warehouse.
Rocco ordered a team to secure the building.
Before they left, Sophia appeared in the doorway.
“Are you going to find the woman?”
Rocco looked down at her.
“Yes.”
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“But I saw her shoes. I might recognize them.”
“You are eight years old. This is not a game.”
Sophia lowered her eyes.
“Neither is leaving a baby in the trash.”
The words silenced him.
Rocco crouched so they were at eye level.
“You are brave, Sophia. But bravery doesn't mean you have to walk into danger.”
“Then promise me you'll bring the truth back.”
He hesitated.
“I promise.”
At the warehouse, Dominic found boxes of medical documents, several burner phones, and photographs of newborns taken outside different hospitals. The evidence suggested a network that had falsified birth records and transferred children under false identities.
But the building had been abandoned for months.
Someone had arrived shortly before them and removed the most important files.
On a dusty desk lay a single photograph of a woman holding a newborn.
The woman's face had been scratched out.
On the back, someone had written:
IF ROCCO FINDS THE FIRST BOY, HE MUST NEVER FIND THE SECOND.
Dominic called the boss.
“There's another child.”
Rocco stared at the photograph when Dominic returned.
“How many?”
“We don't know.”
Rocco looked toward the medical suite, where the newborn slept beneath a soft blanket.
“Then we find every one of them.”
May you like
He paused.
“And we start with the woman who ordered this baby abandoned.”
