Chapter 4 - The Empty Nursery
Dante came to the apartment at six.
He didn’t knock on the door. He called from the lobby while the building manager watched him from behind a desk.
“I know you’re upstairs,” he said.
“Mara is here,” Isabella told him.
“Good. She can hear me say I had nothing to do with what happened to Dr. Ortiz.”
Isabella looked at Mara. She hadn’t told him about Lena.
“How do you know what happened?”
“It’s on the news.”
It wasn’t. Elias checked.
“Go home, Dante.”
“You’re carrying our daughter.”
“I’m aware.”
“I want to see you.”
“No.”
His voice dropped. “Someone sent me a picture of this building an hour ago. You aren’t safe there.”
Isabella almost answered. Mara shook her head.
“Send the picture to my attorney,” Isabella said.
Dante ended the call.
Minutes later, the image arrived. It showed the apartment entrance from across the street. A timestamp in the corner placed it at 4:52 p.m. Elias checked the camera feed in the lobby.
The man who had delivered the envelope had stopped outside afterward and taken the photograph.
“He wanted Dante to know where you are,” Elias said.
“Or Dante sent him,” Mara replied.
They moved Isabella that night to a guesthouse owned by Mara’s sister. Before they left, Isabella made one request.
“I need the hospital box from my old house.”
It held her son’s records, photographs, and the blanket they had given him. Elias offered to retrieve it. Isabella told him exactly where to look.
But when he entered the Moretti house with a police escort the next morning, the box was gone.
So was everything in the nursery closet.
Dante called as soon as Elias left.
“Why did you send strangers into our home?”
“Where’s the blue box?”
A pause.
“I put it in storage.”
“When?”
“Months ago.”
“Which storage room?”
“Isabella, you need to come home so we can talk like adults.”
She ended the call.
Mara filed a request to preserve the house’s security footage and storage records. Elias tracked down the company Dante used for private storage. A unit rented in Dante’s name had been accessed at 3:17 that morning.
They brought the access log to the investigator. A warrant followed late that afternoon.
Isabella waited in Mara’s sister’s kitchen, staring at her silent phone.
At seven, Elias called.
“We found the box.”
She put a hand against the counter. “Is everything there?”
“The blanket. The pictures. His medical forms.”
“Then why did Dante move it?”
Elias hesitated.
“What?” Isabella demanded.
“There was another box beside it. Same size, same blue lid.”
“Whose?”
“Look at the photo I sent you.”
On Isabella’s screen were two plastic boxes side by side. A strip of white tape marked the second one.
BABY 47162 — RECEIVED, NOT RELEASED.
May you like
Under the tape was a date from three years ago.
It was the morning after she had been told her son died.
