Chapter 3: The Woman Behind the Voice

For a second, I couldn’t feel my hands.

The baby shifted again. I pressed my palm against that small movement, needing it more than I needed an answer.

“Say that again,” I told the speaker.

Static swallowed the woman’s voice.

Dritan lifted the drive. “Now you see why this requires a more private conversation.”

“No,” I said. “I see why you don’t want witnesses.”

I looked at Lorenzo.

“Bring her here. I want the doctor who touched me to look at me when she explains what happened.”

He turned toward Matteo.

“Get Mara. Use the north corridor.”

Raul started forward. Balthazar raised his head, ears flattened, and backed me against the fountain.

“I’ll take her inside,” Raul said.

“You’re not taking me anywhere.”

He reached for my arm.

The horse snapped at his sleeve. Raul jerked away, and a small packet fell from his jacket onto the stone.

It was an empty syringe wrapper.

I looked at the blood beneath Balthazar’s jaw. The man who’d approached him with a needle had worn gloves. Raul hadn’t. There was a smear of red across his cuff.

“You were handling him before he broke loose,” I said.

“I handle half the problems on this property.”

“Then why didn’t you tell them something was cutting him?”

Lorenzo looked toward Raul.

“Answer her.”

Dritan slipped behind the door of his car.

I saw it happen and opened my mouth to warn them.

The eastern windows blew outward.

The blast shoved dust across the courtyard. Somebody screamed. Lorenzo caught my shoulder and pulled me behind the fountain as shots struck the terrace above us.

I hit the stone on my hip. Pain flashed down my leg.

“Stay here,” he said.

He fired toward the convoy. Matteo dragged a wounded guard behind a planter.

Through the dust, I saw Balthazar fighting the lead rope. It had snagged beneath the damaged car’s bumper. Each backward step tightened the halter against his wound.

He would break his neck trying to get away.

I reached for the broom where I’d dropped it. The handle was long enough to reach the rope without stepping beyond the low wall beside the fountain.

“Nora—”

“Cover that side. I can get him loose.”

Lorenzo looked at the trapped horse, then raised his gun toward the car.

I crawled along the wall. My uniform caught under my knee. I shoved it free and pushed the broom handle through the loop dragging beneath the bumper.

“Easy, big boy. I see it.”

Balthazar stopped pulling long enough for me to lift the rope over the bent metal.

It slipped free.

I dropped the broom and caught the loose end as he moved toward me.

“North door!” Matteo shouted.

Lorenzo helped me stand. We crossed beneath the arcade while his men kept the vehicles under fire. Balthazar followed, hooves skidding once on the dusty stone.

Raul waited at the entrance.

“This way. The west passage is clear.”

I looked past him. Through the open arch, I could see the western gate swinging inward. Another vehicle was coming through.

“He’s lying,” I said. “They’re coming from that side.”

Raul’s hand moved toward his gun.

Matteo hit him before he could draw it. They crashed into the wall. The gun went off, tearing a hole in the ceiling.

Balthazar lunged at the noise. Raul fell backward, and Lorenzo fired into his leg.

Matteo kicked the pistol away.

“Who opened the gates?” Lorenzo demanded.

Raul clutched his thigh. His face had gone gray, but he smiled at me.

“You should have stayed invisible.”

He bit down. Matteo dropped beside him and seized his jaw, shouting for help.

The smile vanished. Raul convulsed, then lay still.

I stared until Lorenzo stepped between us.

“We have to move.”

Another explosion shook the floor.

He took us along the servants’ corridor, away from the gunfire. At a carved panel, he pressed a concealed latch. The wall opened onto a stone passage with a shallow ramp.

“The old delivery route,” he said. “It goes under the house.”

Matteo stayed at the entrance to direct the remaining guards.

I led Balthazar down the ramp. His shoulder brushed the wall, but the passage widened below. Lorenzo kept turning back to check us.

“I’m coming,” I said before he could tell me to hurry.

At a steel door, he entered a code.

A woman stood inside the medical room holding a revolver with both hands. Gray hair had escaped her bun. When she saw me, she lowered the weapon.

I knew her face.

The clinic. A cold hand on my wrist. Someone telling Danny to wait outside.

“You,” I said.

She set the gun on the desk.

“I’m Dr. Mara Vale. Nora, I need you to listen—”

“I listened to everybody in that clinic. I woke up and asked what happened, and nobody would answer me. You’re going to answer now.”

Lorenzo closed the door. I stayed near it, Balthazar behind me in the passage.

“Is this my child?”

Mara’s eyes filled.

“Yes.”

“You said I wasn’t the mother.”

“The connection broke. I was speaking about Margaret Hayes. The woman on your birth record.”

I stared at her.

“You don’t know my mother.”

“I know the documents were changed.”

“Start with the clinic.”

She nodded, swallowing.

“You were already pregnant when Danny brought you in. I examined you, took blood, and recorded an ultrasound. Dritan ordered me to produce a report saying an embryo had been transferred to you.”

“Did you do it?”

“I falsified the report. There was no transfer.”

I gripped the back of a chair.

For months I’d been told what I owed, who could take my baby, what would happen if I ran. Every threat had come with paperwork I wasn’t allowed to read.

“Then none of them has a claim on this child.”

“Not through anything that happened in my clinic.”

“Put that in writing.”

“I already have.”

She pushed a folder across the desk. I read my name, the dates, her signed statement. My hands still shook, but I could breathe again.

I took the folder.

“I’m keeping this.”

Lorenzo nodded. “You should.”

I faced him.

“And you should have told me she was here.”

“She arrived last night. I didn’t know whether I could trust her.”

“But you trusted her enough to keep me in the dark.”

He accepted that without answering.

Mara opened a second envelope.

“There was another reason Dritan wanted the blood sample. Danny found letters after your grandfather died. He sent photographs of them, and of you.”

She placed an old photograph on the desk.

A young woman stood beside a chestnut horse, laughing. Dark hair blew across her cheek. Her open hand held a peppermint.

I touched the edge of the picture.

I had seen that woman once before, in a photograph my grandfather kept inside his Bible. He said it was my mother before she got sick.

“Margaret,” I whispered.

“Elena,” Lorenzo said.

The way he spoke her name made me look up.

He had gone pale.

“Elena Moretti,” he continued. “She trained horses for my family.”

Something struck the steel door. Balthazar shifted behind it, and Lorenzo lifted his gun.

“Get away from the entrance,” he told me.

I moved beside the desk, taking the photograph with me.

“Who was she to you?”

He looked at the picture in my hand.

“The woman I was going to leave with.”

Another impact rang through the room.

“She had a daughter,” I said.

His eyes met mine.

“Yes.”

Mara slid a laboratory report beneath the light. Two samples. A date. Lines of numbers I couldn’t make sense of.

I reached for it. Lorenzo caught the edge, then stopped when I looked at his hand.

“What happened to the daughter?” I asked.

His grip loosened.

“I was told their car had burned. We never found the baby. I buried an empty coffin.”

The pounding outside stopped.

I drew the report toward me.

“Let go, Lorenzo. Tell me whose blood they compared with mine.”