Chapter 18 - THE PRICE OF M-17
I don’t remember screaming.
I remember Luka catching my shoulders.
I remember Ethan turning white.
I remember running toward the nursery even though I had already seen the empty bassinet in the photograph.
Luka’s security team confirmed the nurse was alive.
Sophie had been taken less than eight minutes earlier.
A camera caught a woman leaving through the service road.
Adriana.
Luka’s cousin.
“Where would she go?” I demanded.
He was already moving.
“An old Moretti warehouse near the harbor.”
“Then we go.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“My daughter is there.”
“And Adriana wants you emotional.”
“She has my baby.”
Luka’s expression cracked.
“I know.”
Ethan stepped forward.
“She asked for M-17.”
Luka looked at him.
“She thinks we still have only one copy.”
Amelia had already sent copies to federal investigators.
The ledger could no longer be erased.
Adriana didn’t know that.
Ethan looked at me.
“Let me take it.”
“No.”
“Mara.”
“She wants me.”
“She wants leverage.”
His voice shook.
“And I created the situation that gave her access to our lives.”
I stared at him.
“This is not your redemption scene.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to risk yourself and erase everything.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
He nodded.
Then said quietly, “She’s my daughter too.”
For the first time, I didn’t correct him.
We went together.
Not alone.
Luka coordinated with federal agents without Adriana knowing.
At the warehouse, I walked inside carrying the original M-17 ledger.
Adriana stood beneath a hanging industrial light.
She was elegant.
Calm.
Almost fifty.
Sophie was in a portable carrier on a table several feet away.
She was crying.
Every cell in my body screamed to run to her.
Adriana lifted a gun.
“Stop.”
I stopped.
“Give me the ledger.”
“You took the wrong thing.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“You think this is about paper.”
“It is.”
“No.”
I looked at my daughter.
“It stopped being about paper when you touched her.”
Adriana smiled.
“You sound like Elise.”
“You knew my mother?”
“I watched her destroy my father.”
“Your father destroyed himself.”
Her face hardened.
Behind me, Ethan entered.
Adriana looked surprised.
“Marco’s little secret.”
Ethan flinched but kept moving.
“She doesn’t have what you want.”
“She has everything I want.”
“No.”
He held up another folder.
“I do.”
Adriana’s eyes sharpened.
“What is that?”
“My claim to Marco Moretti’s estate.”
Luka had prepared it as bait.
Ethan moved closer.
“You want control?”
He held the pages up.
“Take this.”
“Ethan,” I whispered.
He looked at Sophie.
Then at me.
“Get her.”
Adriana’s attention shifted for one second.
That was enough.
Luka came through the side entrance.
Agents flooded the warehouse.
Adriana fired.
The shot struck metal.
Ethan tackled the table away from Sophie’s carrier.
I reached her.
I pulled my daughter against my chest.
Her scream became the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
Because she was alive.
Adriana was restrained.
Luka stood over her.
He could have looked triumphant.
He didn’t.
He looked tired.
“Carlo lost,” he said.
“You didn’t have to continue it.”
Adriana laughed bitterly.
“You think blood makes you better?”
“No.”
Luka looked at me holding Sophie.
“Choice does.”
Outside, Ethan sat against an ambulance while paramedics wrapped his injured shoulder.
It wasn’t a gunshot.
He had dislocated it protecting Sophie’s carrier.
I walked toward him.
He looked at our daughter.
“Is she okay?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes.
A tear escaped.
“Thank God.”
I said nothing.
Then he looked at me.
“Mara.”
“What?”
“Open the last DNA envelope publicly.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“Because Richard built his life on hidden bloodlines.”
May you like
His voice steadied.
“End it with the truth.”
