Chapter 9 - THEY WERE BUILDING A CASE AGAINST ME
Suddenly, every strange event had a purpose.
The crying.
The doctors.
The nannies.
The sleepless nights.
The anonymous complaints that Marco discovered had been made to child welfare authorities twice during the previous month.
Someone had been manufacturing evidence.
Not to hurt the triplets permanently.
To create a documented pattern of chaos.
Evelyn’s petition painted me as a dangerous, unstable widower surrounded by criminals and unable to maintain a safe home for infants.
The ultrasonic device was never mentioned.
Instead, her attorneys attached statements describing “repeated unexplained episodes of extreme distress.”
“They created the problem,” my attorney said, “then used the symptoms as evidence.”
I wanted to destroy something.
Instead, I looked at Theo asleep against Elena’s shoulder.
That calmed me.
Anger had ruled too much of my life already.
This required something stronger.
Evidence.
Dr. Gable prepared a statement explaining the emitter.
The neurologist provided measurements.
Marco documented the hidden installation.
Rebecca agreed to testify about Evelyn’s payment.
Carlo agreed to admit his financial misconduct and explain the blackmail.
“You’ll expose yourself,” I told him.
“I should have done it years ago.”
For once, my uncle sounded honest.
Late that night, Elena found me alone in the kitchen warming a bottle for Nora.
“You should sleep.”
“I tried.”
She smiled sadly.
“Parents don’t really sleep.”
I almost smiled back.
Then she became serious.
“There’s something Mrs. Moretti told me that I never understood.”
“What?”
“She said if anyone ever came for the children through the courts, I should look inside the blue music box.”
My head snapped toward her.
“What blue music box?”
“The one from her bedroom.”
Lucia’s room had remained locked since her death.
I had never been able to change it.
We opened it together.
The blue music box sat inside her dresser exactly where Elena remembered.
Beneath the velvet jewelry tray was a narrow compartment.
Inside lay a memory card.
Marco inserted it into an offline computer.
There was one video.
Lucia appeared on the screen.
Alive.
Pregnant with the triplets.
She looked directly into the camera.
“My name is Lucia Moretti. I am recording this because Evelyn Mercer has threatened my family.”
Then she held up a document.
“I discovered that Evelyn forged an amendment naming herself successor trustee.”
My attorney stared at the screen.
That alone could collapse Evelyn’s petition.
But Lucia wasn’t finished.
“If anything happens to me, Adrien needs to know who helped Evelyn.”
She looked down.
Then spoke another name.
May you like
A name that made Dr. Gable drop the folder in his hands.
“Dr. Nathan Gable.”
