Chapter 11 - The Baby in the Blanket
Victor stared at the phone.
“What did you say?”
Grant laughed bitterly. “You really don’t know.”
“Whose child is Rosie?”
“You should ask Simon.”
The call ended.
Victor immediately ordered DNA testing.
Eli refused at first.
“She’s ours.”
“She is,” Victor said. “That isn’t what we’re testing.”
The results arrived the next day.
Rosie was not biologically related to Eli, Nora, or Sam.
Nora cried.
Sam did not understand why that mattered.
Eli picked Rosie up and held her tighter.
“She’s still my sister.”
Victor nodded. “Yes.”
Dana dug through Elena’s archived employment records.
Six months before her death, Elena had been assigned briefly to a maternity ward after staffing shortages.
One newborn had vanished from the hospital during a fire alarm.
The official record said the infant was later found and returned to her mother.
Dana found no signed discharge form.
The mother’s name was Rebecca Cross.
Simon’s younger sister.
Victor sat back.
“Why would Elena have Simon’s niece?”
Leah answered slowly. “Maybe she didn’t take her.”
Dana nodded. “Maybe she rescued her.”
They found Rebecca in a long-term psychiatric facility under a court-appointed guardianship.
The guardian was Simon Cross.
Victor’s anger sharpened.
Simon had declared his sister unstable after childbirth, controlled her finances, and taken custody of her baby.
Except the baby disappeared before he could place her with a private adoption agency.
Elena had hidden Rosie among her own children.
Why?
The answer came from another file on the microSD card.
A video of Simon arguing with Elena in a hospital parking garage.
“You don’t understand what that child is worth,” Simon hissed.
Elena answered, “She’s a baby, not an account.”
Simon stepped closer.
“You stole from me.”
“No,” Elena said. “I stopped you from selling her.”
Victor felt sick.
Then Dana’s phone buzzed.
Facial recognition had found Simon.
May you like
He had entered Rebecca Cross’s facility twenty minutes earlier.
And signed Rosie’s name into the visitor log.
