Chapter 13
The rain had slowed to a steady, freezing drizzle, slicking the pavement beneath my running shoes as I chased after Mark. He reached Elena’s dark blue sedan first, grabbing the driver’s-side door handle and jerking it open with violent force.
The interior was completely empty.
The heater was still humming softly, blowing warm air against the windshield, and a half-empty cup of coffee sat in the center console. But Elena was gone. On the passenger seat rested her dark blue zip-up jacket, neatly folded beside a heavy manila envelope addressed in stark black handwriting to Mark.
"She bolted," Mark said, his breath pluming white in the cold night air as he slammed the car door shut in frustration. He grabbed the manila envelope off the seat and ripped the clasp open.
I caught up to him, leaning against the side of the car to catch my breath while keeping little Leo sheltered beneath the fabric of my navy sweatshirt. "What's inside, Mark? Is there a note?"
Mark pulled out a thick stack of glossy photographs and a single legal document stamped with a red corporate seal. He flipped through the photos under the amber glow of the streetlamp, and as he did, all the color drained from his athletic face for the second time that night. His knees wobbled slightly, and he had to steady himself against the roof of the car.
"Mark? What are those?" I asked, my voice trembling with dread as I stepped closer.
He didn't answer immediately. He handed the top photograph to me.
My breath caught in my throat. It was a photograph taken through a high-powered telephoto lens, showing Elena standing inside a sterile hospital room six months ago—the exact room where I had given birth to Leo. But she wasn't visiting. In her arms, she was holding a newborn infant wrapped in a white blanket with blue stars, while a doctor in scrubs handed her a clipboard to sign.
"This was taken the day Leo was born," Mark whispered, his voice hollow and broken. "Before I even arrived at the hospital. Ma... she arranged the entire thing. She paid off the attending physician."
"Paid them off for what?" I demanded, turning to the next photograph.
The next picture showed Elena walking out of a private adoption agency downtown, handing a crying infant to a wealthy-looking couple standing beside a black luxury SUV, while an identical infant—the one currently sleeping in my arms—was tucked safely inside her designer handbag.
"She didn't just switch our baby, Clara," Mark said, his voice dropping into a horrific whisper. "She sold our real son to a private broker on the black market six months ago. And she replaced him with a random baby from the agency to cover her tracks so we would never suspect a thing."
The world spun violently around me. I looked down at little Leo in my arms, who opened his big, innocent eyes and let out a soft yawn, completely unaware that the woman who raised him was a monster, and that he wasn't even biologically ours.
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"If this isn't our real son..." I sobbed, tears streaming down my face as I clutched the baby tighter to my chest. "Whose child are we holding, Mark?"
Before Mark could answer, the headlights of a black police cruiser swung into our driveway, its emergency lights flashing a brilliant red and blue against the dark night sky.
