Daddy, You're Mama's Baby Too! 🥹❤️ What This Little Boy Said Had Everyone Laughing! 😂

For nearly an hour, Daniel couldn't form a useful sentence. The birth hospital. The tiny white hat. Claire exhausted and radiant. Eli's furious first cry. All the most certain details of their life had suddenly acquired a shadow.

"A video can be edited," Malik reminded them. "A hospital band can be copied. Don't jump to a conclusion."

"You ever held a baby you thought was yours?" Daniel asked. "I want to jump to about a hundred conclusions."

Claire sat beside him, rigid. "I gave birth to Eli. I remember every second of it."

"Nobody's questioning that," Malik said. "We're questioning the purpose of that file."

Hospital records confirmed Eli's birth to Claire and Daniel Mercer. A nurse remembered them clearly because Daniel had fainted during delivery and apologized to everyone afterward. Malik requested archived security records, though most footage had already been overwritten.

At home, years of photos spread across the coffee table. In one, Eli was hours old and sleeping on Daniel's chest. In another, Claire laughed as a seven-month-old Eli smeared oatmeal in her hair. Daniel felt ashamed for studying their son's face like evidence instead of simply seeing him.

"He's ours," Claire said. "Whatever game this is, he's ours."

Daniel reached for her hand. "I know."

But he knew one more thing: somebody had chosen Eli's name for that file before he was born. That wasn't a coincidence he could cuddle away.

Malik called at sunset. "The maternity ward received a contractor maintenance request on the day Eli was delivered. The contractor name was Bell Systems."

"Mason owns Bell Systems?" Claire asked.

"He owns a parent company that owns it. And a technician accessed the nursery camera network without authorization."

Daniel's stomach twisted. "What did he do?"

"We don't know yet."