Chapter 6 - The Woman Who Died Twice

Adrian read the death certificate three times.

“This is forged.”

Matteo shook his head. “It’s registered, signed, and backed by a cremation record.”

“Then the woman I fired wasn’t Evelyn.”

Mia sat across from him.

“Did she look different?”

“No.”

“Act different?”

Adrian’s face changed slightly.

“What?” Mia asked.

“She stopped wearing perfume.”

Matteo frowned. “That’s your detail?”

“She wore the same perfume for eight years. Gardenia. Too much of it.”

Mia remembered the scent under Adrian’s office door the day she told him she was pregnant.

“She wore it then.”

“Yes.”

“After I disappeared?”

Adrian thought.

“For at least a year.”

“So either the death certificate is false,” Mia said, “or someone became Evelyn very late.”

Matteo opened another file.

“The body was identified by dental records.”

“Who signed the identification?” Adrian asked.

Matteo hesitated.

“Salvatore.”

Silence.

Adrian stood.

“I’m done pretending we don’t know.”

Mia blocked the study door.

“No.”

“Move.”

“No.”

“Mia.”

“You confront him now, you get rage instead of answers.”

“He signed a false identification.”

“Or a real one.”

He stared at her.

She continued. “What if Evelyn really died? What if the woman you fired was someone else because Salvatore wanted you to believe Evelyn was still inside your organization?”

Matteo nodded reluctantly. “She’s right.”

Adrian’s glare shifted to him.

Matteo raised both hands. “Professionally speaking.”

Mia stepped closer.

“We go to Mercy North first.”

Two hours later, she and Adrian entered the hospital separately. Matteo’s people stayed outside. Mia wore a dark coat and glasses. Adrian looked like a man trying and failing to appear ordinary.

“You know people are staring at you,” she murmured.

“They stare because you keep whispering.”

“They stare because you look like you’re attending a hostile takeover of pediatrics.”

A records supervisor named Helen Baird met them in a basement office.

“I can’t release patient data without authorization,” she said.

Mia slid her identification forward.

“I’m the patient.”

Helen checked the old record number.

Her face changed.

“What?” Mia asked.

“Your chart has an access restriction.”

“Placed by whom?”

“I don’t know. It’s old.”

Adrian leaned forward.

“Can you see who accessed it three years ago?”

Helen hesitated.

Mia said, “Someone photographed me in my room while I was pregnant. Someone later obtained my children’s birth worksheet. We are trying to determine whether the breach happened here.”

That changed everything.

Helen called compliance.

Forty minutes later, they had a list.

Seven employees opened Mia’s file during her admission. Six were expected.

The seventh was a temporary patient advocate named Elena Vale.

Mia had never heard the name.

Adrian had.

“Elena was Evelyn’s sister.”

Helen looked between them.

“You know her?”

“Not personally.”

Mia turned to him. “You never mentioned a sister.”

“I didn’t know she worked here.”

They left with no documents they were not legally entitled to, but enough information to redraw the map.

In the car, Matteo searched Elena Vale.

“No current address. Last tax filing four years ago. Previous employment in patient services, elder care, and private nursing.”

“Photo?” Mia asked.

Matteo turned the screen.

Mia stopped breathing.

She had seen Elena before.

Not at the hospital.

At the delivery center where Ronan and Wren were born six weeks later.

“She was there.”

Adrian’s head snapped toward her.

“She was a nurse?”

“No. She brought blankets. She said she volunteered with the maternity charity.”

“What did she say to you?”

Mia searched the memory.

“She asked whether the father knew.”

Adrian went still.

“What did you tell her?”

“I said no.”

“And then?”

Mia’s voice thinned.

“She told me sometimes fathers were safer not knowing.”

Back at the lake house, a package waited inside the gate.

No courier had been seen leaving it.

Inside was a small silver baby bracelet.

Mia recognized it instantly.

Ronan’s hospital bracelet from the day he was born.

On the inside, beneath his name, someone had scratched a date.

Not his birth date.

The date was two days later.

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The day Mia remembered waking from medication to find his bassinet empty for twenty-seven minutes.

\nBefore leaving Mercy North, Mia asked Helen Baird one final question.\n\n“Was there ever a complaint filed about unauthorized access to my chart?”\n\nHelen searched old compliance notes and frowned. “Yes. Anonymous. Closed because the person who reported it withdrew the complaint.”\n\n“Date?”\n\n“Two days after your discharge.”\n\n“Can you tell who filed it?” Adrian asked.\n\n“No. But there’s a callback number.”\n\nMatteo checked it outside. The number had once belonged to Elena Vale.\n\nMia leaned against the car. “So she was spying on me and reporting the spying.”\n\n“Maybe she realized someone else had access,” Adrian said.\n\n“Or realized she had crossed a line.”\n\nHe looked at her. “Both can be true.”\n\nMia nodded slowly. That possibility mattered. People did not always fit into the clean categories fear created for them.\n