Chapter 4 - GRACE REED’S LETTER
Mason had spent eighteen months believing silence was the safest way to protect everyone involved. That belief collapsed when Sylvester told him Julia’s Northgate document had been hidden behind Evan’s photograph. Mason asked for one hour before explaining himself, not to escape but to retrieve something stored in his apartment. Sylvester nearly refused. Rebecca advised him to allow it under supervision because forcing the confrontation too early could cost them whatever Mason had preserved.
He returned with a sealed metal box.
Inside were twelve letters written by Grace Reed.
Mason explained that Grace fled New York after the Arden blackout because she believed someone inside the hospital intended to blame her for the disappearance of an infant. She refused to tell Mason details while their parents were alive, saying only that powerful people were involved and that knowing less protected him. Years later, after developing ovarian cancer, she began writing everything down.
Grace’s first letter confirmed that both Stallone twins were alive when the neonatal wing evacuated. She personally carried Child Two from the nursery to a surgical recovery bay while another nurse transported Evan. The infants were stable for premature newborns. Forty minutes later Grace returned and found Child Two gone.
The sign-out sheet said Dr. Malcolm Arden authorized transfer to Imaging Room C.
Malcolm denied ordering it.
Grace reported the discrepancy to hospital security. By dawn, Miles Trent arrived claiming to represent the family and instructed staff that the missing infant had died during transfer. Grace objected because no body had been recovered. Hours later, her supervisor ordered her to amend her incident statement to remove the missing-child language.
Grace refused.
Two days later she was suspended for violating emergency protocols.
The false explanation finally died in Arthur—no, in Sylvester’s mind. This was not a clerical mistake layered beneath grief. Someone had deliberately changed the event from missing infant to dead infant before the family could ask where the child went.
Mason’s box contained something else. Grace had kept a photocopy of the original neonatal sign-out sheet. Child Two had been transferred using a temporary destination code: P-7.
Rebecca recognized nothing about it until she searched old Arden facility plans. P-7 was not an imaging room. It was a private underground vehicle bay used for VIP patient transport.
The baby left the clinical area.
Grace’s letters became more personal after that. She wrote that she spent years wondering whether she should contact Sylvester, but every attorney she consulted warned that she had copied confidential medical records and might face professional ruin. More importantly, someone followed her for several weeks after she moved to Connecticut. Her apartment was entered twice without theft. She concluded that whoever removed the infant was monitoring her.
Then Julia found her.
Five years earlier, Julia appeared at Grace’s home with a Northgate sheet and asked one question: “Was my son alive?”
Grace said yes.
Julia cried for nearly an hour.
According to Grace, Julia wanted to tell Sylvester immediately, but Grace convinced her to wait forty-eight hours while they identified who still had access to the old files. Julia believed someone in the family’s legal structure had helped bury the incident because the forged disposition forms had passed through Miles Trent.
The letters stopped describing their meetings after that.
The final note written before Grace became too ill contained one line that changed Mason’s role completely.
Julia believed the second boy may still be alive. She said she found a payment trail. If she dies before she finishes, find the father only when Miles Trent no longer controls his security.
Sylvester looked up.
“Miles controlled my security?”
“For years,” Mason said. “Your previous protection company was selected through his office.”
That explained why Mason waited. He did not join Sylvester’s team by coincidence. After Grace died, he applied through an outside firm when Miles’s preferred contractor lost the account. Mason wanted access to Sylvester but feared bringing evidence into a structure Grace specifically warned had been compromised.
Sylvester hated him for the delay.
He also understood it.
Then Rebecca noticed a mark on Grace’s photocopied sign-out sheet. Beside P-7 someone had written two initials by hand.
M.T.
May you like
Miles Trent had not merely helped manage the aftermath.
His initials were on the paper that moved Child Two out of the hospital.
