Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN THE WHITE COAT|
By sunrise, Marco had ordered every file connected to Isabella's death brought to the mansion.
The estate's private conference room became an investigation center. Victor placed security footage on three screens while Marco sat with Lily beside him.
The girl had not let go of his sleeve since Arthur's confession.
"Find the woman who worked at the clinic that night," Marco ordered. "Every nurse, every doctor, every cleaner. I want their names."
Victor nodded.
"We already have one lead. A nurse named Grace Miller left New York two weeks after the fire. She changed her name and moved to Pennsylvania."
"Bring her here."
"Alive?"
Marco looked at him.
"Does that need to be a question?"
Victor lowered his eyes.
"No, boss."
Lily tugged at Marco's sleeve.
He turned toward her.
She took a pencil and drew a rectangle on a piece of paper. Inside it, she drew a small window. Then she drew a woman standing behind the window.
Marco studied the picture.
"Is this the clinic?"
Lily nodded.
She added a second figure, much taller than the first, and drew a circle around the woman's face.
"Is that Isabella?"
Lily shook her head.
She pointed toward the taller figure.
Then she wrote a single word.
MOTHER.
Marco stared at the page.
"Your mother?"
Lily shook her head again.
She pointed toward the portrait of Isabella that hung outside the conference room.
Then she pointed toward the drawing.
Marco finally understood.
The woman in the drawing had been wearing a white coat.
A nurse.
By noon, Victor had located Grace Miller.
She agreed to meet them at a roadside diner outside Philadelphia. Marco arrived with two guards, while Lily stayed in the armored vehicle with Elena.
Grace was sixty-one, with silver hair and tired eyes. She looked at Marco as though she had spent six years expecting him to appear.
"I wondered when you'd come," she said.
"Tell me what happened that night."
Grace folded her hands around a coffee cup.
"The fire began in the medical records room. Someone locked the emergency exit. We were told to evacuate the patients through the eastern corridor."
"Who told you?"
"A woman from the hospital administration. She said she had authorization from the family."
"Sophia?"
Grace shook her head.
"No. Your wife."
Marco went still.
"Isabella was in the hospital that night?"
"She had been admitted under another name. She was recovering from complications. Your family was told she died before the fire spread."
"Why?"
"Because someone wanted the world to believe both mother and child were dead."
Grace explained that she had carried a newborn out through a service entrance while another nurse took Isabella to a waiting ambulance.
She had been instructed to leave the baby at a small church outside the city.
Instead, she had hidden the infant with a retired nurse who lived nearby.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because the person who gave me the instructions showed me photographs of your men. She said if I went to you, my children would die."
Marco's expression hardened.
"Who was she?"
Grace looked toward the window.
"Your mother, Eleanor Duca."
The name struck harder than Marco expected.
His mother had died three years earlier after a sudden stroke. She had been the quiet authority behind the family, a woman who never needed to raise her voice to control a room.
"You're certain?"
Grace nodded.
"She came to the clinic herself. She carried a silver cane with a wolf's head. I remember because she struck the floor when she was angry."
Marco remembered that cane.
He had inherited it after her funeral.
Grace reached into her handbag and removed a photograph.
It showed Isabella standing beside a black sedan, holding a newborn wrapped in a blue blanket.
Behind her stood Eleanor Duca.
The photograph had been taken six years earlier.
On the back, Isabella had written a message.
If Marco ever finds Lily, tell him I tried to come home.
Marco stared at the handwriting until the letters blurred.
"Where is Isabella now?"
Grace's lips trembled.
"I don't know. But I heard Eleanor mention a place called Saint Agnes."
"An orphanage?"
"No."
Grace lowered her voice.
"A private residence for women who knew too much."
Marco stood so abruptly that his chair fell backward.
He had spent six years mourning a dead wife.
May you like
Now he had evidence that his wife might have been alive when he buried her.
And somewhere in the city, someone had worked very hard to make sure she stayed missing.
