Chapter 2 - THE NURSE WHO STOLE A CHILD'S NAME
“Which baby did you switch?” Gabriel Moretti demanded.
The woman on the phone stopped crying.
“Mr. Moretti, if I tell you that while Vanessa is still inside St. Mary's, she will destroy the only proof we have.”
Gabriel stood in the staff sitting room of his Manhattan mansion, holding his late mother's silver locket.
Across from him, Rachel Brooks clutched her four-year-old daughter.
Emma had fallen asleep against her shoulder, completely unaware that a stranger had just confessed to changing two children's identities.
“Tell me your name,” Gabriel said.
“Eleanor Price. I was a maternity nurse at St. Mary's.”
“Twenty-seven years ago?”
“And four years ago.”
Gabriel felt something cold settle in his chest.
“You knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me why you put my sister's hospital identification label inside her necklace.”
A painful silence followed.
“I didn't put it there. Your mother did.”
Gabriel looked down at the photograph.
His mother, Elena Moretti, smiling weakly while holding a newborn girl.
For twenty-seven years, he'd believed that photograph didn't exist.
He'd been told his mother died after a sudden illness.
His father never spoke about her final days.
And now a stranger was telling him she'd secretly given birth.
“Where is my sister?” Gabriel asked.
Eleanor's voice trembled.
“I don't know where she is tonight. But I know where she was four years ago.”
Gabriel glanced toward Rachel.
“Tell me.”
“She was in the maternity ward when Rachel Brooks delivered her daughter.”
Rachel lifted her head.
“What?”
Eleanor continued.
“Your sister was registered under another name. She arrived that same morning and delivered a little girl of her own.”
Rachel tightened her arms around Emma.
“I don't understand.”
“Rachel,” Gabriel said carefully, “Eleanor says another baby was born when Emma was.”
Rachel stared at him.
“What does that have to do with my daughter?”
Gabriel couldn't answer.
Eleanor did.
“Because the baby Rachel carried home wasn't the baby she delivered.”
Rachel's face changed.
Not immediately.
First came confusion.
Then disbelief.
Then something much worse.
She looked at Emma as though someone had reached inside her chest and threatened to remove her heart.
“No.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“No, that's not possible.”
“I was there,” Eleanor whispered.
“You're lying.”
“Rachel—”
“Don't say my name!”
Emma stirred.
“Mommy?”
Rachel immediately softened her voice.
“I'm right here, sweetheart.”
The little girl nestled closer.
Gabriel stepped away from them.
“Eleanor, stay on the line.”
He called his security chief, Marco Bellini, on another phone.
“Where is Vanessa?”
“Her car has reached St. Mary's, sir. She's entering through the old administrative wing.”
“Don't let her reach the records unattended. Preserve the hospital's security footage and alert its administration.”
“Understood.”
“And Marco?”
“Yes?”
“No one comes near Rachel or Emma without my permission.”
Gabriel ended the call.
Eleanor spoke again.
“Vanessa isn't going there to learn the truth.”
“Then why?”
“Because Catherine Whitmore kept something she was supposed to destroy.”
Gabriel frowned.
“Vanessa's mother?”
“Yes.”
Rachel looked up.
“Catherine helped me after Emma was born.”
“She did,” Eleanor replied. “And that is why I finally decided to speak.”
Gabriel demanded an explanation.
Eleanor took a shaky breath.
“Twenty-seven years ago, Catherine was the maternity supervisor. I was a junior nurse. Your mother delivered a healthy daughter, but the child was removed from the private ward before Elena recovered from anesthesia.”
“Removed by whom?”
“Catherine.”
Gabriel's hand tightened around the locket.
“And my father?”
“I don't know what he knew.”
Gabriel remembered his father refusing to let him visit the hospital.
He remembered flowers arriving at the mansion.
And then the funeral.
He remembered standing beside a closed casket while adults told him to be brave.
“Who was the other baby?” he asked.
“A newborn girl whose mother had agreed to a private adoption. Catherine switched their identification bands, and the official records followed the wrong children.”
Gabriel stared at the fireplace.
“So my sister grew up under another woman's name.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Eleanor hesitated.
“Because someone wanted Elena Moretti's daughter removed from the family.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
He had spent decades believing his mother had left him no one.
Now he didn't even know whether the sister he'd never met was safe.
“And four years ago?” Rachel demanded.
Eleanor sounded close to breaking.
“Catherine arranged another switch. Rachel's baby was taken from the maternity nursery. Emma was placed in Rachel's arms instead.”
Rachel shook her head.
“No. I held my daughter after delivery.”
“You held her for a few minutes. Then a nurse took her for observation because she was having trouble breathing.”
Rachel remembered.
The small oxygen mask.
The long wait.
Catherine finally bringing back a sleeping infant wrapped in a pink blanket.
“That's when you switched them?” Rachel whispered.
“Yes.”
Rachel covered her mouth.
Gabriel felt sick.
“Why would Catherine do this again?”
“Because the other mother recognized something she shouldn't have.”
“What?”
“The silver locket.”
Gabriel stared at it.
“Explain.”
“Your sister came to the hospital wearing that necklace. Catherine recognized it immediately. She knew the woman standing in front of her was the daughter Elena Moretti had lost.”
“And she switched the babies to silence her?”
“Not exactly.”
Eleanor hesitated.
“Your sister had discovered Catherine's involvement in the original switch. She'd begun asking questions. Catherine used the newborns to gain control over her.”
Rachel stood so abruptly that Emma woke.
“Where is my real daughter?”
Eleanor went silent.
“Answer me!”
“She's alive.”
Rachel began shaking.
“Where?”
“I cannot tell you over this phone. Not because I won't. Because I don't know which name she's living under now.”
Gabriel stared at the speaker.
“What do you mean?”
“After the switch, one child left St. Mary's with Rachel. The other was discharged through a private arrangement. Catherine changed the second child's paperwork again.”
Rachel sank onto the sofa.
Emma touched her cheek.
“Mommy sad?”
Rachel kissed her forehead.
“No, baby. Mommy's just tired.”
Gabriel knelt beside them.
“Rachel, look at me.”
She shook her head.
“Please don't tell me you're going to take Emma away.”
He felt those words harder than any threat he'd ever received.
“I won't.”
“But she's not mine.”
Gabriel looked at the little girl.
Emma was twisting the corner of Rachel's sleeve between her fingers.
“She knows who her mother is,” he said.
Rachel's eyes filled.
“But somewhere out there, another little girl—”
“I know.”
Before he could continue, Eleanor spoke.
“Mr. Moretti, there's something else.”
Gabriel stood.
“What?”
“The child Rachel raised wasn't chosen randomly.”
Gabriel felt his stomach tighten.
“Whose child is she?”
Eleanor whispered, “Your sister's.”
Gabriel slowly turned toward Emma.
The child smiled sleepily.
“Mr. Gabe?”
He couldn't speak.
“You have shiny necklace?”
Gabriel looked at the locket.
His mother's initials.
His mother's photograph.
And a four-year-old girl who might be her granddaughter.
“Eleanor,” he said, “where can I find you?”
“I'm coming to St. Mary's with the evidence Catherine forgot I kept.”
“What evidence?”
“A nursery photograph. The original identification bands. And an old visitor's pass.”
“Whose pass?”
Eleanor answered with a single name.
“Your father's.”
Gabriel's father had died six years earlier.
He had never confessed to knowing about a daughter.
Gabriel stared at his mother's photograph.
Then Eleanor delivered the words that changed everything.
“Gabriel, the person who ordered your sister taken away wasn't Catherine Whitmore.”
“Then who was it?”
Eleanor began crying again.
“It was someone your mother trusted enough to let into her hospital room.”
And Gabriel remembered the woman who had stood beside his mother's hospital bed.
The same woman who had helped raise him afterward.
May you like
His father's second wife.
Margaret Moretti.
