Chapter 1 - The Hidden Seam
His jaw tightened, but Matteo lifted the mattress from the carved wooden crib.
Nothing lay beneath it.
“I told you,” he said.
Liana shifted Nico higher against her shoulder and studied the empty frame.
“The woman didn’t put it beneath the mattress,” she said.
“She put it inside.”
Matteo stared at her.
Liana pointed to a thin line of uneven stitching along the mattress’s lower edge.
One section had been sewn with dark thread instead of white.
Matteo pulled a knife from his pocket and carefully cut three stitches.
A tiny object slipped into his palm.
It was a silver locket no larger than a quarter.
A crescent moon had been engraved on its face.
Liana’s knees nearly gave way.
She reached beneath the collar of her uniform and withdrew an identical locket.
“My mother gave me this when I was a child,” she whispered.
Matteo opened the locket he had found.
There was no photograph inside.
Only a memory card and a narrow strip of paper.
Two words had been written on it.
FIND ELENA.
Matteo’s face turned to stone.
“Elena was my wife.”
Liana looked from the note to the nursery monitor.
“The woman in the video?”
“My wife died seven months ago.”
“Did you see her body?”
The question struck him harder than an accusation.
Matteo looked away.
“The car burned.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
His eyes returned to hers.
“No.”
Nico stirred between them.
Liana rubbed his back and began humming the only lullaby she could remember from childhood.
Nico raised his head immediately.
His eyes widened.
Then he touched Liana’s cheek and made a soft, trembling sound.
“Mama.”
Liana stopped humming.
Matteo went completely still.
Nico pressed his palm against her face and repeated it.
“Mama.”
“I’m not his mother,” Liana whispered.
Matteo moved to the secure tablet and inserted the memory card.
A single video appeared.
The woman in the dark hood sat directly in front of the camera.
For several seconds, she kept her face hidden.
Then she pulled the hood back.
Liana stared into a face almost identical to her own.
The same gray eyes.
The same narrow nose.
The same small scar through the left eyebrow.
Matteo gripped the edge of the cabinet.
“Elena.”
The woman on the screen looked exhausted and frightened.
But she was alive.
“If Liana Graves is standing beside you,” Elena said, “then they have already taken her child.”
May you like
Liana stopped breathing.
“They told her the baby died, but the coffin is empty.”
