Chapter 5 - The Photograph From Room 418

Mia dropped the phone onto the desk.

“That was Mercy North.”

Adrian looked at the photograph again.

“You were admitted there?”

“At twenty-nine weeks. Preterm contractions.”

“Who knew?”

“My obstetrician. Dot. The hospital.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

Matteo zoomed in on the image.

“The angle is from the doorway.”

Mia’s throat tightened.

“A nurse? Orderly?”

“Or someone wearing a badge.”

Adrian’s voice was controlled, but his knuckles had gone white.

“I want every employee roster from that month.”

Mia snapped, “You can’t break into a hospital database.”

“I can ask legally.”

She looked at him.

He raised one eyebrow.

“I am capable of paperwork.”

Despite herself, she almost smiled.

By evening, Matteo had obtained visitor logs through a private investigator and a former hospital administrator. One name appeared twice without a matching patient relation.

Evelyn Crowe.

Mia sat very still.

“She came to the hospital.”

Adrian’s voice was low. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“No idea.”

“Stop saying that like it’s acceptable.”

“It isn’t.”

Ronan padded into the study holding a wooden puzzle piece.

“Mommy, Wren took the cow.”

Mia bent immediately.

“Did you ask for it back?”

“She said no.”

“What do we do when someone says no?”

Ronan sighed with the suffering of a philosopher. “Find another cow.”

Adrian looked down to hide a smile.

Ronan noticed him.

“You got cows?”

“I might.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Ronan pointed accusingly. “You don’t know where anything lives.”

This time Mia did smile.

The warmth vanished when Ronan climbed onto her knee and studied Adrian.

“Are you Mommy’s friend?”

“No,” Mia and Adrian said together.

Ronan frowned.

“Enemy?”

Mia closed her eyes briefly.

Adrian crouched so they were level.

“I made your mother very sad a long time ago.”

Ronan looked at Mia.

“You cry?”

“Sometimes.”

“Because him?”

Mia could have lied.

She chose something gentler.

“Because of a lot of things.”

Ronan considered Adrian with grave suspicion.

“Say sorry.”

Adrian did not look at Mia when he answered.

“I’m sorry.”

Ronan nodded, satisfied with justice, then ran off looking for another cow.

Mia’s throat tightened.

“That doesn’t fix anything.”

“I know.”

“But don’t ever use them to apologize to me.”

“I won’t.”

Matteo interrupted with a call from the gate.

A courier had arrived with a sealed envelope addressed to Mia.

No return name.

Inside was a photocopy of Wren’s original birth certificate application.

Not the finalized certificate.

The hospital worksheet Mia had filled out before choosing to leave the father section blank.

Across the bottom someone had handwritten:

Father: Adrian Luca Castellano.

Mia’s hands shook.

“I never wrote that.”

Adrian looked at the handwriting.

“Neither did I.”

Matteo photographed the paper.

“Who had access?”

“Hospital registration.”

“And you,” Mia said suddenly.

Adrian looked at her.

“You had a file on me. Maybe someone in your organization found this years ago.”

“If they had, I would have known.”

“Would you?”

His expression hardened because he could not answer honestly.

That night, Mia found him alone in the kitchen staring at two untouched glasses of water.

“You’re afraid,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Yes.”

She had never heard him admit fear.

“Of Salvatore?”

“No.”

“Evelyn?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“That I’m going to learn there was a moment when I could have found you, and I missed it because I trusted the wrong person.”

Mia leaned against the counter.

“There were a lot of moments.”

“I know.”

She exhaled.

“Tomorrow we go to Mercy North.”

“You and me?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not safe.”

“Neither is sitting here while strangers mail me pieces of my children’s birth records.”

He studied her, then nodded.

The next morning, before they could leave, Matteo entered with a face that told them the situation had changed.

“Evelyn Crowe is dead.”

Mia felt the room tilt.

“When?” Adrian asked.

“Officially? Eighteen months ago.”

Adrian stared at him.

“That’s impossible. I fired her eighteen months ago.”

Matteo placed a death certificate on the table.

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“According to the state, she died eleven days before you fired her.”

\nMia spent the next hour writing down everything she remembered from the birth center: staff uniforms, room numbers, meal trays, even the lullaby that played when another baby was born down the hall.\n\nAdrian watched from across the table. “You remember details when you’re afraid.”\n\n“I remember details because nobody else was there to remember them for me.”\n\nHe lowered his eyes.\n\nShe regretted the cruelty for half a second, then decided truth was allowed to hurt.\n\nOn the fourth page, she stopped.\n\n“What?” Matteo asked.\n\n“The woman who brought the blankets had a burn mark on her wrist. Tiny. Like a crescent.”\n\nAdrian searched the old employee photograph of Elena. The image showed the same mark.\n\nMia felt a strange relief. Memory had not betrayed her.\n\n“She was real,” she whispered.\n\nAdrian replied, “And now we find out what she was trying to do.”\n