Chapter 5 - The Baby Who Was Worth BillionsFor three seconds, Dante did not react.
Then the entire conference room seemed to change temperature.
“Say that again.”
The security officer’s voice trembled through the radio.
“Leo is gone.”
Vivienne stood.
“How?”
“The pediatric facility received an evacuation order because of a reported gas leak. It was fraudulent. During transport, the ambulance was intercepted.”
Dante’s hand tightened around the radio.
“How many casualties?”
“Two guards injured. One paramedic unconscious.”
“And Leo?”
“Taken.”
Dante hurled the radio against the wall.
Vivienne flinched.
Then her expression hardened.
“Breaking things does not find him.”
Dante turned toward her.
“My father has him.”
“Maybe.”
“Who else?”
“The people your father just admitted he works for.”
Shaw nodded.
“Assume nothing.”
Dante hated those words because they were correct.
They regrouped in a secure basement command center.
Nico’s wound had passed cleanly through his shoulder, and despite medical advice he refused hospitalization.
“Patch me up,” he told the medic. “I’m staying.”
For the first time, Dante did not argue.
His distrust of Nico was still there.
But distrust would have to coexist with necessity.
Shaw pulled city surveillance.
The ambulance transporting Leo disappeared beneath an overpass on Lower Wacker Drive.
Three minutes later, a similar ambulance emerged.
Different license plate.
Different driver.
No baby.
“They switched vehicles,” Shaw said.
Dante studied the map.
“Traffic cameras?”
“Disabled for eight blocks.”
“Police access?”
“Or city contractor access.”
Vivienne stared at the image of the original ambulance entering the underpass.
“Why use an ambulance at all after the switch?”
“To blend in.”
“No.”
She magnified a still frame.
“There’s oxygen equipment visible.”
Shaw looked at her.
“They need to keep Leo alive.”
Dante turned.
“Why?”
“If Gabriel simply wanted him dead, he could have killed him during the abduction.”
A terrible hope entered Dante’s chest.
Leo was valuable alive.
At least temporarily.
Samuel’s disappearance created another problem.
Without the family attorney, they had no direct access to some of Marco’s confidential estate records.
Nico suddenly remembered a second attorney.
“Marco used someone else the year before he died.”
“Who?”
“Rebecca Lang.”
They found her running a tiny law practice in Milwaukee.
At first she refused to speak.
Then Dante put her on video and showed her Leo’s empty hospital crib.
Her resistance disappeared.
“Marco was afraid,” Rebecca said.
“Of Gabriel?”
“Of someone.”
“Who?”
“He never gave me a name.”
She searched old encrypted files.
“Marco came to me because he believed Samuel Beckett was reporting changes in his estate plan.”
Dante frowned.
“To my father?”
“Possibly.”
Marco had created a secret codicil.
Not filed with the family firm.
Rebecca opened it.
“If Leo died under suspicious circumstances before his eighteenth birthday, Marco’s voting shares would not revert to Gabriel.”
“Where would they go?”
Rebecca looked directly at Dante.
“To Vivienne Cross.”
Nobody spoke.
Vivienne looked stunned.
“That’s impossible.”
Dante stared at her.
“You knew Marco well.”
“He was your brother.”
“He trusted you.”
“But why would he leave billions in voting control to me?”
Rebecca answered.
“Because he described Dr. Cross as ‘the one person Gabriel can’t buy.’”
Vivienne sat down.
Dante remembered Marco teasing him when he first brought Vivienne to Sunday dinner.
Marry that one, Marco had said. She argues with Dad better than you do.
At the time they had laughed.
Now it sounded like a warning.
Rebecca continued.
“The ownership remains in trust for Leo. Dr. Cross only becomes controlling trustee.”
“So Gabriel gains nothing if he kills Leo,” Shaw said.
“Correct.”
“Unless Vivienne dies first,” Nico added.
Dante looked at her.
The nursery attack suddenly made perfect sense.
Kill Vivienne.
Then kill Leo.
The codicil collapses into secondary provisions.
Rebecca opened the next page.
“And those secondary provisions transfer voting control to the Moretti Family Foundation.”
Dante’s stomach turned.
“Who chairs it?”
She checked.
“Samuel Beckett.”
Everyone looked at one another.
Samuel again.
Was he victim or collaborator?
They needed him alive to find out.
The answer arrived that evening.
A video file appeared on Dante’s private server.
Gabriel sat in a dark room.
Samuel was tied to a chair beside him.
Leo lay asleep in a portable bassinet.
Vivienne moved toward the screen.
“He’s breathing normally.”
Dante barely heard her.
Gabriel smiled into the camera.
“My grandson is comfortable.”
“You hurt him and I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Dante?”
Gabriel leaned back.
“You continue to confuse anger with control.”
Samuel lifted his head.
“Dante, don’t sign anything.”
Gabriel struck him.
Dante surged toward the screen as though he could cross it.
Vivienne grabbed his arm.
Gabriel continued.
“At noon tomorrow, you will transfer your controlling interest in Moretti Holdings to a trust account.”
Dante laughed bitterly.
“You think I care about the company more than Leo?”
“No.”
Gabriel’s smile vanished.
“I know you don’t.”
He held up a folder.
“That is why I also require Dr. Cross.”
Dante went still.
Vivienne whispered, “Me?”
“She comes alone.”
“No,” Dante said instantly.
Gabriel ignored him.
“Dr. Cross will bring the original Tyler Gaines surgical records currently stored in her private archive.”
Vivienne’s expression changed.
Dante saw it.
“You still have them?”
“A duplicate set.”
“Why?”
“Because I never believed the official copies.”
Gabriel smiled.
“Smart woman.”
Vivienne moved closer to the screen.
“What’s in them?”
“You tell me.”
Then the feed ended.
Dante turned toward her.
“You’re not going.”
“Of course I am.”
“No.”
“Leo was taken because someone wants me dead anyway.”
“That is not an argument for handing yourself to them.”
“It is if I can get close enough to find him.”
Dante lowered his voice.
“I almost killed you yesterday.”
Vivienne stared at him.
“I’m aware.”
“I am not delivering you to my father today.”
“Then stop thinking like someone who delivers people.”
That silenced him.
Vivienne pulled her laptop from her bag.
“I kept three versions of Tyler’s chart.”
She opened encrypted files.
“One before surgery, one downloaded thirty minutes after he died, and one from the hospital archive the next morning.”
Shaw moved closer.
“What changed?”
“That’s what I never found.”
For six hours they compared every line.
Medication orders.
Blood pressure.
Anesthesia.
Laboratory results.
At 3:12 in the morning, Vivienne stopped.
“There.”
Dante leaned toward the screen.
“What?”
“A pathology notation.”
The preoperative chart showed a blood sample identification string.
The postmortem chart showed a different one.
Only one digit changed.
Shaw frowned.
“What does it mean?”
“Tyler’s blood sample was switched.”
“With whose?”
Vivienne searched a private medical registry.
Nothing.
Then she examined the code itself.
“These aren’t hospital numbers.”
“What are they?”
“Donor identifiers.”
Dante stared.
“Organ donors?”
Vivienne shook her head slowly.
“No.”
She looked horrified.
“Experimental tissue donors.”
The hospital had participated in a private biotechnology research program.
Gabriel’s organization had not been laundering only money.
They had been laundering human identities through medical systems.
Dead people made alive on paper.
Living people made dead.
Blood samples changed.
Records rewritten.
Deaths manufactured.
The Swallows.
A system for making people disappear.
Vivienne opened Tyler’s old operative scan.
She zoomed into his chest imaging.
Then froze.
“What?”
“There’s an implant.”
“What kind?”
“Not medical.”
She enlarged a tiny object beneath his collarbone.
“A data capsule.”
Shaw stared.
“Like a microdrive?”
“Possibly.”
Dante finally understood why Tyler had been killed.
He had been carrying evidence.
Perhaps without knowing it.
“And the body?” Dante asked.
Vivienne looked at him.
“If they switched biological identifiers…”
She swallowed.
“I’m no longer certain Tyler Gaines was the man I operated on.”
A phone buzzed.
Not Dante’s.
Vivienne’s.
An unknown text.
A photograph loaded.
Leo.
Sleeping.
Underneath it were coordinates.
Then a message:
Bring the records. Come alone. You have six hours.
Dante reached for the phone.
Vivienne pulled it away.
“No.”
“You are not going alone.”
She looked directly at him.
“For once, Dante, trust me.”
The words wounded him.
Because trust was exactly what he had failed to give her.
He nodded.
“All right.”
Vivienne blinked.
She had expected a fight.
“You’ll let me go?”
“No.”
His expression changed.
“I’ll trust you enough to make the plan.”
And for the first time since the nursery, the smallest crack appeared in the wall between them.
Vivienne placed the phone on the table.
“Then we bring them exactly what they asked for.”
“The original records?”
May you like
She shook her head.
“A lie convincing enough to make them reveal what they’re afraid of.”
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