Chapter 7 - THE EMPTY INCUBATOR
The tunnel ended beneath a stone mausoleum at the northern edge of the property.
Bianca pushed open the hidden door.
Cold night air rushed inside.
Rain fell through the trees, turning the ground to black mud.
A dark medical van waited on the service road.
Adrian stopped.
“Who brought that?”
“I arranged it,” Bianca said.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“You expected us to need an escape vehicle?”
“I expected Carlo to attack.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because someone in your inner circle was feeding him information.”
Adrian looked toward the tunnel behind us.
“Gabriel saved us.”
“He also chose the chapel as our destination.”
“He did not know about the tunnel.”
Bianca said nothing.
That silence was louder than an accusation.
Dr. Sloan opened the van and checked the equipment.
“It has power and oxygen.”
“Is it safe?” I asked.
“It is safer than carrying Sofia through the rain.”
They loaded the incubator first.
My daughter lay beneath the clear cover with a tiny oxygen tube beneath her nose. Her chest rose and fell so rapidly that it frightened me.
I wanted to hold her.
I wanted to count every finger.
Instead, I could only watch strangers wheel her away.
Adrian placed my board beside the incubator.
“We are going to Northwestern Memorial,” Dr. Sloan said.
“No,” Adrian replied.
“It has the neonatal unit she needs.”
“Carlo will expect it.”
“Every minute matters.”
Bianca climbed into the driver’s seat.
“There’s a smaller children’s hospital in Highland Park.”
“Not equipped for a premature infant with respiratory distress,” Dr. Sloan said.
Adrian looked at me.
“You decide.”
It was the first time that night anyone had given me a choice.
“Northwestern,” I said. “Take us where she has the best chance.”
Adrian nodded.
“Then we create a diversion.”
He instructed two Moretti vehicles to head north while another traveled toward Lake Michigan.
Our van went south without headlights for the first mile.
The rain intensified.
Dr. Levin worked on Gabriel’s housekeeper and her child in the rear section. The infant had not been physically harmed, though the mother shook uncontrollably.
“What is your name?” I asked her.
“Mara.”
“How did Carlo get inside the staff residence?”
“He came with Mr. Voss.”
The van became silent.
Adrian turned slowly.
“Gabriel brought him?”
Mara nodded, tears running down her face.
“Mr. Voss said there was a security emergency. He ordered everyone into the basement shelter. When I tried to take Noah, one of Carlo’s men grabbed him.”
Bianca looked at Adrian through the rearview mirror.
“I told you.”
“No,” Adrian said. “Gabriel may not have known Carlo’s men were with him.”
“He was your security chief. He knew every face on the property.”
“He was wounded protecting the child.”
“Or he made certain we watched him perform an act of loyalty.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
I remembered Gabriel entering my hospital room alone.
The uneasiness I had felt.
The initials in the ledger.
G.V.
“Why would he help Carlo?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t,” Adrian replied.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know him.”
“You knew me too.”
The words cut through him.
He turned away.
The van reached the expressway.
Two Moretti vehicles joined us.
For ten minutes, no one followed.
Then headlights appeared behind the convoy.
A black SUV accelerated.
Another emerged from an entrance ramp.
Bianca checked the mirror.
“We have company.”
Adrian drew his pistol.
“How many?”
“Two vehicles. Possibly three.”
The first SUV struck the rear escort car.
Metal screamed.
The escort vehicle spun across two lanes and crashed into the barrier.
Dr. Sloan gripped the incubator.
“Keep this vehicle steady!”
Bianca pressed the accelerator.
The medical van was fast, but it was not designed for a highway pursuit.
The SUV moved beside us.
Its rear window lowered.
Adrian fired first.
The shooter disappeared.
Glass shattered across the road.
Another attacker leaned out.
Bianca swerved.
Bullets struck the side of the van.
The incubator alarm sounded.
“Sofia!” I tried to sit up.
Pain tore through my abdomen.
Dr. Sloan pushed me down.
“She’s secure.”
The van exited the expressway at high speed.
Bianca turned beneath an overpass and entered a warehouse district.
The remaining escort car followed.
The attackers remained behind us.
“Where are you going?” Adrian demanded.
“There’s a police station three blocks east.”
“Carlo owns half the officers.”
“He doesn’t own the cameras outside.”
She turned sharply.
The van’s rear doors slammed against their locks.
My blood pressure monitor slipped from the wall.
The black SUV closed the distance.
It struck us.
The impact threw Adrian against the cabinet.
The incubator shifted.
Dr. Sloan caught it before it overturned.
“Enough!” she shouted. “That child cannot survive this.”
Adrian fired through a small opening in the rear door.
The SUV fell back.
A second vehicle approached from the front.
Its headlights flashed twice.
Bianca slowed.
“What are you doing?” Adrian asked.
“That is one of ours.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I arranged the signal.”
The approaching vehicle turned sideways, blocking the street.
Our van passed through a narrow opening.
The vehicle accelerated after us and rammed the pursuing SUV.
The attackers crashed into a row of parked trucks.
Bianca drove another six blocks before slowing.
No one followed.
Dr. Sloan checked Sofia.
“Her oxygen level is stable.”
I released the breath I had been holding.
Adrian contacted the hospital using Bianca’s secure phone.
A medical team waited in a private ambulance bay when we arrived.
The next few minutes became a blur.
Doors opened.
Doctors surrounded Sofia’s incubator.
Someone separated her from me.
I reached toward her.
“Where are they taking her?”
“To the neonatal unit,” Dr. Sloan said. “You’re going to surgery for additional treatment.”
“I already had surgery.”
“You are still bleeding.”
“I’m not leaving my baby.”
“Elena,” Adrian said, “let them help you.”
I looked at him.
“You stay with her.”
“I stay with you.”
“No. She needs one of us.”
His eyes moved toward the disappearing incubator.
Then back to me.
“I promised not to leave you.”
“That was before she was born.”
He bent and kissed my forehead.
“I’ll go with her.”
The hospital staff wheeled me toward an operating room while Adrian followed Sofia.
For the first time since the clinic, I allowed myself to believe we had escaped.
Carlo had failed.
My daughter was inside a real hospital.
Police officers filled the hallways.
Adrian’s surviving men guarded every entrance.
Surely no one could reach her now.
The doctors treated the remaining bleeding without another major surgery. I received more blood and woke two hours later in a recovery room.
Bianca sat beside the window.
Her coat was gone.
Dried blood stained her white blouse.
“Where is Adrian?”
“With Sofia.”
“How is she?”
“Breathing with assistance. The doctors say she’s strong.”
Relief made me dizzy.
“And Gabriel?”
“No one found him in the chapel.”
“Maybe Carlo took him.”
“Maybe.”
“You still think he betrayed us.”
“I think my father wrote his initials beside the date of his own death.”
I looked at her.
“Do you know what those initials mean?”
“No. But I know Father feared Gabriel before he died.”
“Then why did Adrian trust him?”
“Because Gabriel saved Adrian’s life during an attack in New York.”
“When?”
“Three months after Father’s funeral.”
That timing felt deliberate.
A knock sounded.
Adrian entered.
His shirt had been changed, but blood remained beneath his fingernails.
I reached for him.
He came to the bed.
“How is she?”
“Small. Angry. Beautiful.”
“Did you hold her?”
“I touched her hand.”
His voice cracked on the final word.
I squeezed his fingers.
“We need to see her.”
“When you can stand.”
“I can stand now.”
“You nearly died three hours ago.”
“And she nearly died thirty minutes before that. I’m going.”
Bianca helped Adrian convince the nurse to bring a wheelchair.
The neonatal intensive care unit was quiet and warm. Machines surrounded rows of transparent beds.
A nurse guided us toward the private room at the end of the hall.
Adrian entered first.
Then he stopped.
The incubator was empty.
The breathing tube lay on the mattress.
A nurse rested unconscious on the floor.
For one impossible second, none of us moved.
Then Adrian crossed the room and checked beneath the incubator, as though our daughter might somehow be hidden there.
“Where is she?”
The unconscious nurse did not answer.
Bianca pressed the emergency button.
Hospital staff rushed inside.
Adrian seized the first doctor by his coat.
“Where is my child?”
“Mr. Moretti, release him,” Bianca said.
The doctor looked terrified.
“I don’t know. She was here ten minutes ago.”
“Lock down the hospital,” Adrian ordered.
Security alarms began sounding.
Doors sealed automatically.
Police officers ran toward the exits.
A technician pulled up the hallway cameras.
The video showed a neonatal transport nurse entering the room.
She wore a mask and cap.
Her identification badge appeared valid.
She disconnected Sofia from the larger machine, transferred her to a portable incubator, and walked calmly through the hallway.
No one stopped her.
At the elevator, she turned toward the camera.
Then she lowered her mask.
Mara, the housekeeper, gasped from the doorway behind us.
“That’s not a woman.”
The face was narrow, pale, and familiar.
Adrian leaned toward the screen.
“It’s Gabriel.”
My body went cold.
Gabriel had changed clothes, covered his wound, and entered the hospital using the chaos he helped create.
The man who had protected Adrian for fifteen years had taken our daughter.
The video continued.
Gabriel wheeled Sofia into a service elevator and disappeared.
A message appeared on Adrian’s phone.
No number.
No location.
Only a photograph of Sofia sleeping inside the portable incubator.
May you like
Beneath it were seven words.
YOUR FATHER STOLE MY NAME. I TOOK YOURS.
