Chapter 3
The subterranean garage was cold, smelling of exhaust fumes and damp concrete, a sharp contrast to the warm opulence of the ballroom upstairs. Gideon's town car idled quietly in the corner slot, its tinted windows absorbing the fluorescent glare. We slid into the back seat in tense silence, Owen nestled safely between us in my arms, his tiny chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. Gideon punched a code into the partition console, locking the rear cabin from the driver's compartment before pulling a heavy leather briefcase from the floorboard.
"Driver, take us to the downtown office," Gideon instructed through the intercom, his tone flat and authoritative.
The car glided smoothly out of the garage and into the rain-slicked city streets, the streetlights smearing into long streaks of gold against the glass. Gideon snapped open the brass latches of the briefcase and pulled out a thick ledger bound in black buckram—the master archive of his private holdings, or whatever records he kept regarding his personal affairs. He flipped past pages of financial statements and property deeds until he reached a transparent plastic sleeve holding a single sheet of thermal receipt paper.
"This is the wire transfer receipt from the adoption agency," Gideon said, angling the paper toward the dim cabin light. "Three hundred thousand dollars, paid directly to an escrow account under the name Vance Medical Foundation."
I stared at the numbers, my stomach turning. "Three hundred thousand. To steal my child and sell him to a grieving man who thought he was adopting an orphan."
"I wasn't grieving an adoption; I was told his mother was gone," Gideon corrected softly, his eyes fixed on the paper. He looked up at me, the harsh light catching the contours of his beard and the heavy ink on his neck. "When they told me my partner had died in childbirth and the baby was frail, I paid whatever they asked to secure his care. They had hospital letterhead, forged death certificates, pediatric intake forms with forged signatures."
"My signature," I said, tracing the edge of the paper with a fingernail. "They kept my signature on file from when I was admitted at twelve. They just copied and pasted it onto surrender forms ten years later."
Gideon slammed the ledger shut, the sound echoing sharply in the quiet car. He reached out and tapped on the glass partition, signaling the driver to hurry. "Vance is still on the board of directors for the municipal hospital network. If she's running this out of the clinic, she's got half the city's legal establishment in her pocket."
"Then we don't go to the police," I said firmly, shifting Owen slightly as the baby stirred in his sleep. "If her people are in the legal establishment, a precinct report will be intercepted before the ink dries. We need the physical files from her private office."
Gideon stared at me for a long moment, assessing me not as a frightened kitchen worker in a sequin dress, but as a mother who had waited ten years for justice. A slow, grim nod crossed his face. "My security team maintains a secondary archive downtown, separate from my corporate servers. If we pull the original birth registry logs from the state health department servers using my corporate credentials, we can cross-reference every baby listed as 'deceased' at Vance's clinic during that five-year window."
"And if we find them?" I asked.
"Then we find every other child she stole," Gideon replied, his voice cold as steel.
The car slowed to a halt outside a nondescript brick building in the financial district, far from the lights of the ballroom. Rain drummed steadily against the roof. Gideon reached for the door handle, then paused, looking back at me and the sleeping child between us.
May you like
"Clara," he said, his voice dropping its defensive edge for the first time. "Whatever happens when we walk inside that building, I'm not giving him back to anyone else."
"Neither am I," I answered, pushing the door open into the damp night air.
