part 2
PART 2
The nurse looked as if she expected the ceiling to collapse.
I stared at the tiny bracelet around my daughter’s ankle.
Baby Girl Moretti.
My hands shook.
“Change it back.”
The man in black did not blink.
“Not until she is safe.”
“Safe from who?”
He looked toward the hallway, where one of his men had quietly closed the door.
“My name is Dante Moretti.”
Even through the medication and pain, I knew that name.
Boston mothers warned their sons not to owe money to men like him.
Politicians smiled beside him and denied knowing him by morning.
I pulled my daughter closer.
“You had no right.”
“No,” he said calmly.
“I had no time.”
Dante placed a folder on the foot of my hospital bed.
Inside were copies of newborn discharge forms, custody authorization papers, and a notarized document with my signature at the bottom.
Only I had never signed it.
My blood went cold.
“What is this?”
“Someone tried to take your daughter from the nursery while you were unconscious.”
The room spun.
“Jake?”
Dante’s mouth tightened.
“Jake Sullivan does not exist.”
He opened the next page.
A photograph appeared.
The man who had kissed my forehead, touched my stomach, promised our baby a backyard and bedtime stories.
Only beneath the photo was another name.
Jacob Salerno.
Dante’s voice lowered.
“He works for a family that has been hunting Moretti bloodlines for years.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I until I saw the hospital file.”
He turned one final page.
My daughter’s blood type.
A genetic marker.
A match notification flagged by the hospital database.
Dante looked at the baby in my arms with something almost like grief.
“Your daughter carries a marker only found in my father’s line.”
I stopped breathing.
“That’s impossible.”
Before he could answer, the door opened.
A doctor entered with a pale face and a sealed DNA report.
Behind him stood Jake.
Smiling.
Holding a court order.
Dante stepped in front of my bed.
May you like
Jake looked at the bracelet on my daughter’s ankle and his smile vanished.
Then the doctor whispered, “Miss Harper, Jake is not the father.”
