Chapter 1
PART 2: Four months after my wife disappeared, I finally found her in a Chicago hospital M1
Sophia opened the door only far enough to look at me.
Her face was pale beneath the hospital lights, her dark hair pulled away from her cheeks, the exhaustion in her eyes deeper than anything I remembered. She held our daughter against her chest with one arm and gripped the doorframe with the other.
For four months, I had imagined this moment.
I had imagined anger.
I had imagined demanding answers.
I had imagined Sophia crying, apologizing, explaining why she had walked away from me.
I had never imagined that I would be the one unable to speak.
She looked smaller than I remembered.
Not weaker.
Just tired in a way that made something inside me break.
“Dom,” she whispered, “our baby isn’t the only child Mateo came here to take.”
Behind me, the hospital alarm continued pulsing softly through the corridor.
Not a screaming siren.
Just a steady electronic tone.
Controlled.
Clinical.
Somehow that made it worse.
I looked down at my phone again.
The photograph was still there.
Mateo stood beside Luca.
My younger brother.
The brother I had buried eleven years ago.
Or thought I had.
Luca’s face had changed.
His hair was longer. There were lines around his eyes that hadn’t existed when we were young. A faint scar crossed his left eyebrow.
But I knew him.
I knew the angle of his jaw.
The uneven smile he had always hated in photographs.
The way he stood with one shoulder slightly lower than the other after breaking his collarbone when we were boys.
It was him.
It was Luca.
I lifted my eyes to Sophia.
“What child?”
Her expression tightened.
“Come inside.”
“Sophia—”
“Please.”
That one word stopped me.
I stepped into the room.
The nurse followed and quietly closed the door.
Sophia moved toward the window with our daughter.
I watched her every step.
I could not stop looking at the baby.
Our baby.
My daughter.
She had a tiny pink cap over her head. One hand rested beneath her chin, curled into a fist.
I had spent months believing Sophia had abandoned me.
Meanwhile she had carried our child alone.
The thought made the divorce papers under my arm feel like something shameful.
I set them on a chair without looking at them again.
“What’s her name?” I asked.