Chapter 3 - THE BABY WITHOUT A NAME
The operating room lights were painfully bright.
Doctors moved around me in blue gowns while alarms sounded near my head. Someone explained placental abruption, fetal distress, and emergency cesarean delivery, but the words blurred together.
All I understood was that my baby might die.
“Where is my husband?” a nurse asked.
“He’s not coming.”
The answer tasted like blood.
A mask covered my face.
The anesthesiologist told me to breathe slowly.
My last conscious thought was not of Julian.
It was of the child inside me, arriving six weeks early into a family built on lies.
When I woke, I was in recovery.
My abdomen burned. My mouth was dry. Diana sat in a chair beside the bed wearing the same dark suit from the wedding.
“The baby?” I whispered.
“She’s alive.”
Tears flooded my eyes.
“Where is she?”
“Neonatal intensive care. She weighs four pounds, one ounce. She’s breathing with assistance, but the doctors are hopeful.”
I began crying so hard that my incision hurt.
Diana moved closer.
“You did well.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You survived.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did Julian come?”
“No.”
“Did they find him?”
“No.”
“What about Eleanor?”
“She and Julian left the estate in a maintenance vehicle registered to a shell company.”
I thought of the voice on the phone.
“She was waiting for him.”
“That is our assumption.”
“And someone released her.”
Diana nodded.
“The officer responsible claims he received an order from a superior. The authorization was fabricated using the credentials of Deputy Attorney General Martin Keller.”
I knew Keller.
He had approved my financial investigation.
“Was Keller involved?”
“He says no. We’re verifying everything.”
I looked toward the window.
“What was on the drive?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Preston called it insurance.”
“He survived surgery. He is refusing to speak without immunity.”
“Seraphina?”
“In custody. She claims she knew nothing about financial crimes or Daniel Rourke.”
“She is lying.”
“I agree.”
A nurse entered and asked whether I wanted to see my daughter.
Nothing else mattered for the next ten minutes.
They wheeled me through quiet halls into the neonatal unit. My baby lay inside a clear incubator beneath a knitted pink cap. Tubes surrounded her tiny body.
She was smaller than I had imagined.
Her hand was no larger than the end of my thumb.
I placed two fingers through the opening.
She curled her hand around one of them.
I broke.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have left them sooner.”
A doctor stood beside me.
“She recognizes your voice.”
My daughter’s chest rose and fell beneath the assistance of the machine.
“Does she have a name?” the doctor asked.
Julian and I had discussed names for months.
He wanted Eleanor.
I had never agreed.
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
My personal phone began vibrating in the pocket of Diana’s coat. She handed it to me.
The caller ID showed Eleanor Sterling.
Diana signaled for me to answer while she activated a recorder.
I pressed the phone to my ear.
“What do you want?”
Eleanor spoke calmly.
“I want you to understand that this disaster is your fault.”
“You locked a woman in premature labor inside a restroom.”
“You chose to create a spectacle.”
“My daughter is in intensive care.”
There was a pause.
“Then perhaps you should consider whether she needs a father in prison.”
Rage moved through me.
“Where is Julian?”
“Safe.”
“He shot Preston.”
“Preston betrayed this family.”
“Did you kill Daniel Rourke?”
Eleanor laughed softly.
“Your profession has made you theatrical.”
“He was held beneath the bottling house.”
This time, she said nothing.
“Julian told me.”
“My son is frightened and confused.”
“Like he was confused when he signed fraudulent transfers?”
“Those signatures protected the estate.”
“They stole public money.”
“Money is never public. It simply belongs to whoever has enough power to control it.”
Diana wrote something on a pad and held it toward me.
KEEP HER TALKING.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“The evidence you collected.”
“It has already been copied.”
“I want your access codes to the Organized Fraud Division archive.”
“That system requires multiple approvals.”
“Then obtain them.”
“No.”
Eleanor’s voice became colder.
“You should ask Diana Cruz what happened to Daniel Rourke’s wife.”
I looked at Diana.
Her expression changed.
“What does that mean?”
Diana reached for the phone, but Eleanor continued.
“Everyone believes Rourke investigated Sterling Ridge alone. He did not. Someone inside your precious division gave him confidential information.”
“Who?”
“Diana knows.”
The call ended.
I stared at her.
“What happened to his wife?”
Diana remained silent.
“Tell me.”
“Her name was Laura Rourke. She died in a car accident four months after Daniel disappeared.”
“Accident?”
“That was the conclusion.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“No.”
“And Eleanor thinks you know who helped Daniel.”
Diana looked through the glass at my daughter.
“Daniel contacted me three days before he vanished.”
My entire body went still.
“You were his source.”
“I gave him internal records after he proved someone had buried evidence. I thought he would take them to federal authorities.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the person who compromised his investigation may still work inside our office.”
The betrayal spread beyond Julian’s family.
It reached into the institution I trusted.
Diana lowered her voice.
“Daniel left a message before he disappeared. He said if anything happened to him, we should search for a child named Lily.”
“Who is Lily?”
“I never found out.”
A nurse approached the incubator and adjusted one of the monitors.
As she moved the blanket, I saw something around my baby’s ankle.
A thin white hospital band.
The printed name was not mine.
It read:
BABY GIRL ROURKE.
I grabbed the nurse’s wrist.
“Why does that say Rourke?”
She looked confused.
“That can’t be right.”
Diana stood immediately.
The nurse checked the chart.
Her face went pale.
“Your daughter’s identification band was changed.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
A security alarm sounded in the neonatal unit.
Someone shouted that an unauthorized woman had entered through the staff corridor.
Diana drew her weapon.
May you like
The lights went out.
And in the darkness, I heard the incubator alarm begin to scream.
