Chapter 6 - THE AGENT WHO KNEW ELENA'S LAST WORDS
Father Gabriel opened the basement door before Victor could stop him.
Naomi Price entered first with a pistol raised.
Four federal agents followed.
She was forty, sharp-eyed, and dressed in a dark raincoat over body armor.
Her gaze moved from Victor to Lily, then to Ethan.
“Put the gun down,” she told Victor.
Victor held his weapon at his side.
“You entered a church with rifles.”
“You entered it with a kidnapped child.”
“My son was taken from a hospital.”
“And you removed him from the scene before state investigators arrived.”
“Because the investigator is on Lucien Montigue’s payroll.”
Naomi glanced at Lily.
“Is that what she told you?”
“It is what I know.”
Victor placed the gun on a table.
Naomi nodded to an agent, who collected it.
Then she looked at Lily.
“Hand me the baby.”
“No.”
“You are under arrest.”
“Then arrest me while I am holding him.”
Naomi’s jaw tightened.
“Lily, do not make this worse.”
“You said the same thing after Elena died.”
The agent’s expression changed.
Victor heard it.
“What did she say after Elena died?”
Naomi ignored him.
She stepped closer to Lily.
“Ethan needs medical care.”
“He needs protection from the people who took him out of Dr. Hale’s clinic.”
“We have Hale in custody.”
Lily froze.
“For what?”
“Falsifying medical records, conspiracy, and obstruction.”
Victor’s face hardened.
“You arrested the doctor who documented my son’s injuries?”
“We arrested the doctor who signed three earlier examinations stating Ethan had no injuries.”
Lily stared at Naomi.
Dr. Hale had examined Ethan after every fever and fall.
If healed fractures existed, she had either missed them or hidden them.
Naomi continued.
“We also found sedatives from Hale’s clinic in the bodies of your guards.”
Victor looked toward Rosa.
She began to tremble again.
“Dr. Hale gave me the syringe,” Rosa whispered.
Everyone turned.
“When?” Victor asked.
“At the clinic.”
“She came to the bathroom while I was crying.”
“She said Sofia would die unless I followed instructions.”
“She put the syringe in my purse.”
Naomi signaled an agent.
He photographed the syringe and sealed it in an evidence bag.
Victor’s voice became dangerously calm.
“Hale has treated my family for twenty-seven years.”
Naomi met his eyes.
“Loyalty is expensive.”
“Lucien Montigue can afford it.”
Lily adjusted Ethan carefully.
“You knew the church location.”
Naomi looked at Father Gabriel.
“He called us.”
Victor turned toward the priest.
Father Gabriel did not look ashamed.
“A child had been abducted,” he said.
“You brought him here instead of a hospital.”
“I called the only federal agent Elena trusted.”
Victor stared at him.
“You knew Elena was working with her?”
Father Gabriel nodded.
Victor laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“My wife built an entire life behind my back.”
“She built an escape route,” Father Gabriel said.
“Those are not the same thing.”
“To a woman married to you, they may have been.”
Victor looked as though the priest had struck him.
Naomi lowered her pistol.
“Everyone sit down.”
“No one is leaving until we decide who can be trusted.”
Victor remained standing.
“You are not taking Ethan.”
“I am placing him in federal protective custody.”
“Which building?”
“That is not your concern.”
“It became my concern when someone carried him out of a secure clinic wearing a nurse’s uniform.”
Naomi studied him.
“You are right about one thing.”
“Our systems are compromised.”
Victor’s expression did not change.
“The custody order came through a judge whose son works for Lucien.”
“The warrant for Lily was drafted before the warehouse explosion.”
“And someone inside my office accessed Elena’s sealed case file last night.”
Lily stared at her.
“Who?”
“We are still tracing it.”
“Then why announce my arrest on television?”
“We did not.”
Naomi turned on the basement television.
A national news channel replayed Detective Bell’s statement.
“Bell has no authority to speak for the FBI,” she said.
“He wanted the entire city hunting you.”
Victor looked at Lily.
“So the warrant is false?”
“The state warrant is real.”
“The story supporting it is not.”
Naomi removed a folder from her coat.
She placed Elena’s photograph on the table.
It had been taken at the crash site.
The front of her car was crushed against a concrete barrier.
Lily looked away.
Victor did not.
Naomi placed a second photograph beside it.
A small black device was attached beneath the brake line.
“Elena’s brakes were remotely disabled,” Naomi said.
Victor’s eyes stayed on the image.
“You knew.”
“We suspected.”
“For two years?”
“We had one corrupted photograph and no device.”
“It disappeared before our evidence team arrived.”
“Who arrived first?” Lily asked.
“Detective Bell.”
The answer filled the basement with silence.
Naomi opened another file.
“Elena called me eleven minutes before the crash.”
“She said she had proof that someone was using Victor’s name to traffic children through private adoptions.”
Rosa crossed herself.
Victor looked at Ethan.
“She said the operation was protected by judges, doctors, police, and at least one member of the Blackwood organization.”
“Dante,” Lily said.
“Possibly.”
“You do not sound convinced.”
“Because Dante did not begin the operation.”
Naomi placed an old financial ledger on the table.
The first entry was dated thirty-one years earlier.
Victor read the name on the signature line.
Alessandro Blackwood.
His father.
Victor’s mouth tightened.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
“The network continued.”
“Dante inherited it.”
“Or someone let him believe he did.”
Naomi turned to Lily.
“Elena’s last words to me were not about Dante.”
Lily felt the room narrow around her.
“What did she say?”
Naomi hesitated.
“She said, ‘The woman in white is not the bride.’”
Victor frowned.
“Serena was not engaged to me then.”
“Exactly.”
Lily remembered the charity dinner.
Serena had worn white.
So had Dr. Hale.
The doctor had been honored for her work with abandoned infants.
Lily whispered the name.
“Miriam.”
Victor looked at her.
“Dr. Hale ran the adoption program for the Blackwood Foundation.”
Naomi nodded.
“And she signed Ethan’s birth certificate.”
Victor’s eyes became still.
“What are you suggesting?”
Naomi reached for Ethan.
“We need a DNA test.”
Victor stepped between them.
“He is my son.”
“I did not say he was not.”
“You did not need to.”
Naomi lowered her hand.
“Victor, Elena had a blood type that made the hospital record impossible.”
“What record?”
“The delivery report states Elena received blood from an incompatible donor and suffered no reaction.”
“That report was rewritten.”
“Why?”
“We do not know.”
Lily thought of the nursery, the cameras, and the two keys.
“Maybe Ethan was switched.”
Victor’s gaze snapped toward her.
She regretted the words immediately.
Ethan stirred and opened his eyes.
He saw Victor and reached toward him.
“Da,” he murmured.
Victor’s face broke.
He took the baby with careful arms.
“Whatever the test says,” he told Naomi, “he is my son.”
Naomi nodded once.
“I believe you.”
Victor looked down at Ethan.
“Then draw the blood here.”
“No outside lab.”
“No digital records.”
Naomi called in a federal medical examiner she trusted.
The samples were collected from Victor, Ethan, and a preserved vial of Elena’s blood held in evidence.
Naomi sealed them personally.
The test would take three hours using an emergency laboratory.
During that time, Victor and Lily reviewed Elena’s files from a backup drive Naomi had recovered.
The files connected Serena to Lucien’s charities, Dante to illegal accounts, and Dr. Hale to twenty-seven sealed adoption cases.
One file contained Ethan’s delivery room footage.
At 3:18 a.m., Dr. Hale carried a newborn from Elena’s room.
At 3:26, she returned with a child wrapped in a different blanket.
Victor watched the sequence five times.
“Where was Elena?”
“Unconscious after an emergency cesarean,” Naomi said.
“What happened to the first baby?”
“We do not know.”
Victor sat down slowly.
Lily felt sick.
Ethan slept in a bassinet beside him, unaware that strangers were turning his birth into evidence.
At 9:47 a.m., Naomi’s secure phone rang.
She listened without speaking.
Then she looked at Victor.
“The results are confirmed.”
Victor stood.
Naomi’s voice softened.
“Ethan is Elena’s biological son.”
Victor closed his eyes.
“But he is not yours.”
The silence after those words was absolute.
Lily watched Victor absorb a wound no bullet could make visible.
He looked at the child who had called him father.
Then he asked the only question that mattered.
“Who is?”
Naomi placed a second report on the table.
“The closest paternal match in the federal database belongs to your younger brother.”
Victor’s face went white.
“Adrian died six years before Ethan was born.”
Naomi looked at the report again.
May you like
“Then Adrian Blackwood is not dead.”
THE NANNY'S TESTIMONY
