Chapter 2 - THE BRACELET THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED
“Mama.”
The little girl’s voice was so soft I almost convinced myself I had imagined it.
Rain struck the metal fire escape above us. Water ran down my hair and into the collar of my diner uniform while Damian Marchetti stood beneath the alley light holding a child who looked enough like me to make breathing hurt.
The little girl reached again.
“Mama.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Damian’s expression hardened.
“What is your name?”
“Elena Brooks.”
“I know that part.”
Of course he did.
His men had probably learned my blood type before I finished crying in the alley.
“I mean your full legal name.”
“Elena Marie Brooks.”
“Date of birth?”
“Why?”
“Answer.”
Something inside me snapped.
Maybe it was grief.
Maybe unemployment.
Maybe fourteen months of waking every morning and remembering there should have been three cribs beside my bed.
“No.”
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
“You ordered your men to investigate me without permission. My manager just fired me because your children called me something they shouldn’t have. And now you’re standing in an alley interrogating me like I committed a crime.”
The little girl whimpered.
I immediately softened.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
Her small hand opened toward me.
Damian looked down at her.
Then back at me.
“Her name is Mia.”
The name hit me for reasons I could not explain.
One of the names I had written in a notebook during pregnancy had been Mia.
I had never told anyone except my mother.
My mother had died six months before I gave birth.
I stared at the child.
“What are the boys called?”
“Noah and Nicholas.”
My heartbeat stumbled.
Noah.
Another name from my notebook.
Not Nicholas.
But Noah.
Damian noticed my face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
I looked away.
“I had names picked out.”
“For your babies?”
“Yes.”
“What names?”
I could barely force the words out.
“Daniel. Noah. Mia.”
Damian went completely still.
Rain continued falling around us.
Then he asked, “Who knew?”
“My mother.”
“Anyone else?”
“The nurses probably saw the notebook.”
“Which hospital?”
“St. Vincent Women’s Center.”
His face changed.
Not dramatically.
But I saw recognition.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Demand answers from me while pretending yours don’t matter.”
For one second, something almost like surprise moved through his eyes.
Then Mia leaned so far toward me that Damian had to tighten his grip.
“Ma-ma.”
My hands started shaking.
“Please stop her.”
Damian’s expression shifted.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Tell her I’m not…”
The sentence died.
I could not say I’m not her mother.
Not while looking at those hazel eyes.
Damian slowly lowered Mia to the ground.
She stood unsteadily in tiny red shoes.
Then walked toward me.
One step.
Two.
Three.
She wrapped both arms around my knees.
My heart broke.
I crouched.
I told myself not to touch her.
I failed immediately.
The moment my arms closed around that warm little body, a sound tore from my throat.
Mia pressed her face against my neck.
She smelled like baby shampoo and strawberries.
The exact scent I had imagined while buying tiny bottles of lotion for children I had been told were dead.
Damian turned away briefly.
His men stood near the alley entrance pretending not to watch.
Then one of them came outside carrying a tablet.
“Boss.”
Damian looked over.
The man lowered his voice.
“We found the hospital record.”
My body went rigid.
Damian held out his hand.
The tablet showed my name.
ELENA MARIE BROOKS.
Emergency cesarean.
Thirty-four weeks.
Triamniotic triplet pregnancy.
Three live births.
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
I grabbed the tablet.
The guard instinctively moved.
Damian stopped him.
“Let her.”
I stared at the screen.
Three live births.
“No.”
My voice barely existed.
“That’s wrong.”
The page listed:
Infant A: Male. 4 lbs 6 oz.
Infant B: Male. 4 lbs 3 oz.
Infant C: Female. 3 lbs 15 oz.
Live births.
All three.
“This is fake.”
Damian said nothing.
“I woke up and they told me they were gone.”
My vision blurred.
“A nurse sat beside me. She said there had been complications. She said they tried everything.”
I looked at Damian.
“They gave me death certificates.”
His security man spoke.
“Those certificates are in the state system.”
“So what are you saying?”
He hesitated.
“The birth records and death records contradict each other.”
I clutched Mia.
She played with the wet string of my apron as if my world were not collapsing.
Damian asked his man, “Who signed the neonatal transfer?”
“Dr. Richard Harlan.”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“Where did the infants go?”
“We’re still tracing.”
“What does this have to do with you?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
I looked from the guard to Damian.
“What?”
He finally spoke.
“The triplets were placed in my custody eleven months ago.”
I stared.
“Placed?”
“They belonged to my younger brother.”
The alley seemed to tilt.
“Your brother?”
“Luca Marchetti.”
I knew the name.
Everybody in the city did.
Luca Marchetti had died in a car explosion almost a year earlier.
News reports said he was thirty-one.
Damian’s only brother.
I shook my head.
“I never met Luca Marchetti.”
Damian’s eyes sharpened.
“Did you know a man named Luke Martin?”
My blood froze.
No.
He saw it.
“Elena?”
I stepped backward.
Mia protested.
“No.”
I could hear my own heartbeat.
Luke Martin.
The charming, quiet construction consultant I had dated for almost a year.
The man who disappeared when I was five months pregnant.
He had told me he needed to travel because his father was sick.
Three weeks later, his number stopped working.
I spent months thinking he had abandoned me.
“Luke…”
My mouth went dry.
“Was Luca?”
Damian nodded once.
I almost dropped Mia.
He caught my elbow.
“Don’t touch me.”
He released me immediately.
“My children’s father was your brother?”
“I believe so.”
“Believe?”
“He used the name Luke Martin when he wanted distance from the family.”
I stared at him.
Everything I had hated Luke for became unstable.
Why had he lied?
Why had he disappeared?
Had he known what happened to me?
“Why do you have them?”
Damian looked toward Mia.
“After Luca died, his attorney delivered documents naming three children as his heirs.”
My skin went cold.
“He knew they were alive.”
“Yes.”
My breath shattered.
“He knew.”
“I don’t know what he knew about you.”
“You just said—”
“I found the children in a private residence outside Milwaukee.”
“What?”
“The woman caring for them said their mother died during childbirth.”
I stopped breathing.
Damian’s eyes remained on mine.
“She gave me documents.”
“Whose name?”
“Rachel Martin.”
“I don’t know any Rachel.”
“She claimed to be Luca’s longtime girlfriend.”
My stomach turned.
Damian continued.
“The documents listed her as the mother.”
I looked at Mia.
Then toward the diner.
Behind those windows, two boys with my eyes were probably waiting for the sister who had followed a stranger outside calling her Mama.
“How old are they?”
“Fourteen months.”
Exactly.
Exactly.
My knees folded.
Damian caught Mia first.
One of his men caught me.
I pushed away.
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t.
Nothing about me was fine.
Damian handed Mia to the guard.
Then looked at me.
“What did the hospital give you when they told you the babies died?”
“Paperwork.”
“Anything physical?”
I closed my eyes.
“A box.”
“What was inside?”
“Three hospital bracelets.”
His face sharpened.
“Do you still have them?”
I almost laughed.
“Do I still have the only things I thought my children ever touched?”
My voice broke.
“Yes.”
They were in my apartment.
Inside a wooden box beneath my bed.
Three tiny bracelets.
One pink.
Two blue.
I had held them every birthday.
Every Christmas.
Every night when grief became too heavy.
Damian took out his phone.
“Cars.”
I stared.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re getting the bracelets.”
“I am not going anywhere with you.”
His voice remained calm.
“Someone falsified the deaths of three newborn children.”
“That doesn’t give you control over me.”
“No.”
He looked toward the diner door.
“But the people responsible may know you just found them.”
My fear sharpened.
Damian continued.
“If they went far enough to steal three babies, create a false mother, hide them for months and somehow connect them to my dead brother, what do you think happens when they learn those babies recognized the woman who gave birth to them?”
A coldness deeper than the rain settled through me.
He was right.
I hated that.
“What happens to my apartment?”
“One of my men secures it.”
“I don’t want your men touching my things.”
“They won’t.”
“My landlord—”
“Will survive.”
“That is not the point.”
Something flickered in Damian’s eyes.
Then he did the strangest thing.
He stopped ordering.
“Elena.”
His voice lowered.
“I don’t know whether those children are yours yet.”
My chest hurt.
“I don’t know whether my brother knew what happened.”
He looked toward Mia.
“And I don’t know who lied to both of us.”
Then his eyes returned to mine.
“But until I know, I am asking you to let me keep you alive.”
Not commanding.
Asking.
I stared at him.
Then nodded.
Once.
Damian turned toward his guards.
“Bring the boys.”
Minutes later, Noah and Nicholas came outside.
The second they saw me, both began reaching.
“Mama.”
That word destroyed the final wall inside me.
I crouched in the rain.
Three toddlers moved toward me.
Three babies I had mourned.
Three lives I had believed ended before I could kiss them.
I held all of them as best I could.
And while Damian Marchetti stood in the alley watching his brother’s children cling to a broke waitress they had supposedly never met, one of his men quietly called from my apartment.
“Boss.”
Damian answered.
“What?”
A pause.
Then his face became stone.
“What do you mean the box is empty?”
I looked up.
My heart stopped.
The bracelets were gone.
Someone had entered my apartment before we got there.
And on my pillow, they had left one thing behind.
May you like
A photograph of me pregnant.
Taken through my bedroom window.
