Chapter 6: What the Test Confirmed
Ferrante arrived within the hour.
He came alone, which was unusual.
He set his bag on the study desk with the careful movements of a man who had rehearsed what he was about to say and still wasn't sure how to begin.
Matteo stood on one side of the desk.
Liana stood on the other.
Nico was upstairs with a guard outside the door.
"Tell me," Matteo said.
Ferrante opened the bag and removed a sealed folder.
He set it on the desk but did not open it.
"The comparison is conclusive," he said.
"The child is not biologically related to you, Matteo."
The room did not change.
The lamp burned the same way.
The clock ticked the same way.
But something in the air shifted like a door swinging open onto a drop.
Matteo's hand went flat on the desk.
He did not pick up the folder.
"And the woman?" he said.
Ferrante looked at Liana.
"The child shares a full maternal match with Ms.
Graves."
Liana had known it was coming.
She had known it since the photograph.
Since the wrist tag.
Since the moment Nico had stopped crying in her arms in a marble foyer and looked at her like she was the only person in the room.
She had known.
And knowing had not prepared her at all.
Her hand went to her mouth.
She turned toward the window.
"Liana." Matteo's voice was quiet.
She shook her head.
She needed a moment.
Just one moment.
He gave it to her.
When she turned back, her eyes were wet but her voice was steady.
"Where is he?
My son.
The baby they gave to someone else."
"We don't know yet," Matteo said.
"But we will."
"Dario has him."
"We don't know that."
"Matteo." She looked at him directly.
"Dario arranged the switch.
He needed a child with Varric bl00d.
He took yours and put mine in his place because a baby with no father on record, born to a single woman with no family, was easy to make disappear." Her voice didn't waver.
"He has my son."
Matteo looked at Ferrante.
"Leave us."
Ferrante picked up his bag and left without a word.
Matteo walked to the window.
He stood with his back to her for a long moment.
When he turned around, something in his face had settled into a stillness she hadn't seen before.
Not anger.
Not grief.
Something colder and more deliberate than either.
"I need you to understand something," he said.
"If I move against Dario without proof that holds in every room — legal, public, within the family — he will use every resource he has to discredit both of us.
He will say you fabricated the DNA.
He will say you came here with a scheme.
He will say the test was corrupted." He paused.
"He will make it about you."
"I know."
"And you're willing to go through that?"
She thought of the small box with the hospital bracelet inside.
The form handed to her at two in the morning.
The grave she had stood beside for a child who had not been in it.
"Tell me what you need," she said.
Matteo moved to the desk.
He opened the sealed folder and looked at the results for the first time.
He read them slowly.
Then he closed the folder.
"I need the hospital records from October third," he said.
"The original intake forms, the delivery logs, the staff roster for that night.
If Dario arranged this, someone inside St.
Carmine's helped him.
That person left a trail."
"How do you get those records?"
"I have a contact in the city records office.
And I have a lawyer who owes me a significant favor." He picked up his phone.
"But there's something else.
Something faster."
"What?"
"The woman who forged the staff badge.
The one who got into the estate three weeks ago.
We assumed she was a threat." He looked at Liana.
"But she came to leave a photograph.
She came to leave evidence.
Which means she was trying to help."
Liana understood immediately.
"She works for Dario."
"Or she worked for him.
Past tense." He set the phone down.
"Someone on the inside turned.
I need to find her before Dario does."
He said it calmly.
But the implication was not calm at all.
Liana looked at the closed folder on the desk.
Her son's DNA inside it.
Proof that he existed.
Proof that he had been taken.
"One more thing," she said.
"The death certificate they gave me.
The hospital bracelet in the box." She met Matteo's eyes.
"Those are forgeries.
Which means someone at that hospital committed fraud.
And if we can prove the bracelet was never on a real infant—"
"Then we have the crjme documented before anything else," Matteo said.
"Yes."
He looked at her for a moment.
"You think like someone who has been planning this."
"I've been grieving for twenty-two days," she said.
"Tonight is the first night I have something to do instead."
He nodded once.
Then he picked up the phone and began to make calls.
By midnight, three things had been set in motion.
May you like
By morning, Liana would learn that the woman who had broken into the nursery had a name.
And that name would change everything.
