[COMPLETED] I Hid Our Baby From Chicago's Most Feared Mafia Boss—Then He Called My Doctor and Left Ginger Tea on My Desk

The date on the forged request sat in my mind all night.

Nine weeks earlier, Victor had confronted Dominic in the Lakeshore Grand Hotel. Nine weeks earlier, I'd left my laptop at a shared workstation. Nine weeks earlier, someone had begun writing my initials onto documents I had never approved.

The timing might have been coincidence. I was tired of letting coincidences explain things that frightened me.

I called Miriam the next morning and asked whether the forensic team could confirm when the first template had been copied. She said they'd already requested the server snapshot and would share the result with my lawyer.

"And Penny?" she added. "Don't investigate the people involved yourself. Let the records do the work."

I promised I wouldn't. It was easier to promise than to keep my mind from circling the same questions.

Leila joined me by video call that afternoon. She had reviewed the workplace records and wanted my statement taken formally, with her present. We arranged a meeting with detectives assigned to the attempted fraud and the harassment report.

At the station I described the gala, Victor's approach in the hallway, Dominic's decision to take me away, and my return to work the following morning. I described where I'd left my laptop and how the forged initials had been made using an old template.

The detective, Sergeant Nolan Reyes, listened without interrupting.

"Did Mr. Raines threaten you directly at the hotel?" he asked.

"He confronted Dominic. I was caught between them. Dominic moved me away before his men followed."

"What did Mr. Raines say?"

I closed my eyes for a moment. The hallway had been tense, but I could not remember his exact words well enough to quote them.

"I don't want to invent a sentence," I said. "I remember his tone and the men behind him."

Reyes nodded and wrote that down.

I appreciated an investigator who valued what I could prove over what might make a better story.

He showed me the photograph from my apartment building. The reporting officer had found a nearby security camera whose time stamp placed a gray-capped man on the pavement across from my entrance that morning. The image was distant, too distant for a reliable identification. It did, however, show him lifting a phone toward the doorway.

"We're checking whether the message came from the same device," Reyes said. "We can't promise an answer today."

I understood.

Back at the hotel, Nora called and asked whether she could come to Chicago. She was worried and she wanted to sit beside me, even if all we did was eat soup and complain about the weather.

"You have a bakery," I reminded her.

"I also have employees who can manage two days without me."

I said yes.

Nora arrived the following evening with a small bag and a paper box of pastries. The moment I saw her, I cried harder than I had at the clinic. I had been handling every decision as though being alone proved I could protect the baby. Letting someone care for me felt frighteningly unfamiliar.

She held me without asking questions.

We ate in the hotel room, and I told her about Dominic, the ultrasound, and the strange relief of finally saying the truth aloud. I showed her the picture. She held it by the edges and smiled softly.

"Hello, little one," she said.

For once I let myself smile back.

The next morning Miriam called with a server finding. An export of the template folder had been initiated under Adrian Vale's administrator account on the evening of the gala. The export destination was a device registered to Cole Mercer's contracting company.

"Does that prove Adrian approved it?" I asked.

"Not by itself. But we've also recovered a message from his company account directing Mercer to check the executive conference-room workstation. The investigators have it."

That changed everything.

Adrian had not merely sponsored an unfamiliar visitor. He had instructed the visitor to look where my documents were kept.

I asked Miriam to repeat the wording. She did, careful not to claim more than the record showed. Then she said the investigators were preparing to interview Adrian.

Dominic called later. I let it ring once before answering.

"I heard about the export," he said.

"I know."

"I'm sorry, Penny. He had access because I trusted him."

"You didn't know he would use it."

"I knew his team was under pressure after we rejected Raines's bids. I should have reviewed how much authority I'd given him."

I sat beside the hotel window, looking at Nora reading on the opposite bed. I thought about how easily regret could become a speech. Dominic had plenty of experience giving speeches.

"What are you going to do?"

"Commission an independent audit, remove unchecked executive permissions, and cooperate with the investigation. And if my company's systems helped someone target you, I'll put that in the report."

"Even if it makes Bellano Tower look bad?"

"Especially then."

After the call, Nora studied me over the top of her book.

"You still love him," she said.

"Yes."

"And you're still afraid of what loving him costs."

"Yes."

She nodded as though those two answers could exist together without one canceling the other.

That afternoon Leila forwarded a notice from the police. Investigators had identified a meeting between Adrian Vale and Cole Mercer at a restaurant two days before the gala. Surveillance corroborated the meeting, but not its conversation.

The final line made my hands cold: the same contractor account had been used to search my home address weeks before anyone contacted the clinic.