Chapter 7 - The Woman Behind Glass
The blast threw me into the partition.
Stone and dust filled the chamber. Marco disappeared behind a cloud of debris. Elias cried out somewhere in the dark.
Grace pounded on the glass.
"Adrian!"
I pushed myself up, ears ringing.
The tunnel we had used was gone. A wall of broken stone sealed the passage.
"I'm here," I shouted.
Grace sagged with relief.
There was a steel door beside the glass, controlled by a keypad. I fired at the lock.
Nothing.
"Don't," Grace said. "It's reinforced."
"What's the code?"
"Your mother's birthday. Backward."
Of course it was.
I punched in the numbers.
The lock clicked.
When the door opened, Grace stepped forward and nearly collapsed.
I caught her.
For one second the war, the family, the guns, all of it disappeared.
She buried her face against my chest.
I held her so tightly I was afraid I might hurt her.
"I'm sorry," I said into her hair. "I'm so sorry."
She pulled back and touched my face like she needed proof I was real.
"You believed her?"
The question was quiet.
It hurt more because she didn't sound angry.
"For two days," I admitted. "I hated myself every minute of it."
Grace closed her eyes.
"We can hate you later. Find Noah first."
That was my wife too.
Always moving toward the emergency.
Marco crawled from the debris, coughing. Elias was alive, though a shard of stone had opened his shoulder.
Grace pointed to a narrow maintenance passage behind the cell.
"They moved Noah through there after he was born. I heard a truck above us."
"Did you see who took him?"
"Dr. Halpern. And your mother."
I helped her toward the passage.
She stopped.
"Wait."
She returned to the bed and pulled a folded sheet of paper from inside the mattress seam.
"I stole this from Halpern."
It was a medical transfer form.
Patient: Infant Male Rossi.
Destination: St. Agnes Recovery Center.
I knew the name. Everyone in the family did.
St. Agnes had closed twenty years ago.
My father had bought the property afterward and used it as a quiet meeting site.
"The clinic north of here," I said.
Grace nodded.
Then she pointed to the bottom of the transfer form.
There was another signature.
Not my mother's.
My uncle Dante's.
Marco swore under his breath.
Dante Rossi was my father's younger brother.
And the man who had spent six months telling me Vittoria was holding the family together while I was gone.
Grace looked at me.
"Your mother didn't do this alone."
A phone began ringing somewhere inside the chamber.
Not ours.
An old landline mounted to the wall.
I answered.
May you like
Dante's voice came through.
"Nephew," he said. "If you want your son alive, stop digging."
