Chapter 1
“Five years ago, you told me my son was gone…”
I held the hospital bracelet between two fingers.
Gregory stopped moving.
Lucille did too.
Theo remained pressed against my coat, his small fingers twisted so tightly into the fabric that his knuckles had turned white. Behind me, four Venturi guards entered the clinic without a sound.
The bracelet was faded.
The print was almost gone.
But I knew that code.
VNT-17-TH.
My father designed the Venturi infant coding system after one of our family hospitals began quietly handling births for people who could not risk ordinary records.
Theo had worn that exact code the night he disappeared.
I looked at Gregory.
“Say it again.”
His face had lost color.
“What?”
“What you told me that night.”
Lucille stepped forward.
“Alessandra, this is not the place—”
I turned my head.
She stopped.
Gregory swallowed.
“The car went into the river.”
“And?”
“The child wasn’t recovered.”
“No.”
My voice became quieter.
“You told me he could not have survived.”
Theo flinched at the word survived.
I felt it.
So did Clara.
I knelt beside him.
“You’re safe.”
He stared into my face as though trying to decide whether that sentence had rules attached to it.
Gregory recovered enough to speak.
“He doesn’t know you.”
Theo immediately hid behind me.
Interesting.
I looked at Gregory.
“You came through my clinic door and reached for him before asking what happened to his leg.”
Silence.
Lucille snapped:
“He belongs with us.”
Again.
Belongs.
Not loves.
Not needs.
Belongs.
I looked at the bracelet.
Then Theo.
Then the people who had watched me bury an empty coffin five years earlier.
“What name did you give him?”
Gregory said nothing.
Theo answered.
“Theo Hayes.”
My chest tightened.
Hayes.
They had kept his first name.
May you like
Not because they loved my memory.
Because somewhere inside their plan, they needed him to remember enough to remain useful.
