Chapter 4 - THE FADED INSCRIPTION
Adrian did not look back at the guard. He kept his eyes locked on Claudia for three long, agonizing seconds before he slowly loosened his grip. He released her wrist, letting her hand drop limp against her cream dress.
"Stay where you are, Claudia," he said, his tone devoid of all heat, which made it a thousand times more dangerous.
He turned his focus to the floor.
With his left hand, Adrian reached out and picked up the small, translucent plastic strip.
It was an authentic newborn identification band from St. Jude’s Women’s Hospital—the high-security private medical facility where Julianna had been admitted three years ago, the facility where she had died during an emergency late-term delivery, the facility where Adrian had been told their infant daughter had been stillborn, suffocated by umbilical complications before she could take her first breath.
Adrian held the plastic strip between his trembling, tattooed fingers, lifting it toward the sunlight streaming through the arched windows.
The ink was faded, blue thermal print on thermal paper, but the embossed hospital seal remained crisp.
His eyes tracked across the lines of text:
PATIENT: INFANT FEMALE
MOTHER: JULIANNA VANCE-MORETTI
FATHER: ADRIAN MORETTI
TIME OF BIRTH: 03:14 AM
STATUS: LIVE BIRTH – APGAR 9/10
BLOOD TYPE: O-NEGATIVE
His hand began to shake.
The tremor was subtle at first, starting in his wrist, then traveling up his forearm until the entire sleeve of his black jacket vibrated.
Three years ago, he had signed death certificates. He had buried an empty, closed-casket infant coffin beside Julianna’s tomb in the family mausoleum. He had spent eighteen months drinking himself to the brink of organ failure, surrounded by armed guards who watched him grieve a daughter he was told had never lived.
Behind him, Ruby’s mother stepped forward, her voice trembling with genuine, innocent confusion.
"Mr. Adrian... what does it say? What is that bracelet?"
Adrian said nothing.
He didn't move. He slowly raised his eyes from the plastic band.
He looked across the five feet of polished marble floor, straight at three-year-old Ruby.
He looked at her soft, brown curls—the exact chestnut wave that had framed Julianna’s face on their wedding morning. He looked at the shape of her small, slightly upturned nose. He looked at her large, hazel-green eyes, carrying the precise gold-flecked iris structure that his mother had passed down to him.
Then, his gaze dropped back to the hospital photograph in his right hand.
The newborn infant in the picture had a tiny, dark, heart-shaped birthmark resting just behind the cartilage of her right ear.
May you like
Adrian looked back at Ruby. Her curls were pulled back into two small pink hair clips, exposing the side of her neck.
There, just beneath her right earlobe, was the exact same dark, heart-shaped birthmark.
