But familiar.
She compared it to archived results from Liana’s child.
Her hands stopped moving.
Matteo saw.
“What?”
Dr. Sloan looked at Liana.
Then at Matteo.
“The patterns are related.”
Liana’s stomach dropped.
“In what way?”
Dr. Sloan explained cautiously.
“They both show exposure to the same uncommon immune marker.”
Matteo’s voice hardened.
“Could that happen naturally?”
“Yes.”
He waited.
She continued.
“But the probability of finding it in two unrelated infants connected to the same physician and facility is very low.”
Liana stared at Nico.
“What does that mean for him?”
“We don’t know yet.”
That was the worst answer.
Matteo leaned both hands on the table.
“I don’t want ‘we don’t know.’”
Dr. Sloan did not flinch.
“Then give me time and complete records.”
“You have both.”
“No. We have what the hospital chose to preserve.”
Matteo straightened.
The difference mattered.
Dominic looked at him.
“There may be backups.”
“Where?”
“Research servers. Insurance archives. State reporting systems.”
Matteo nodded.
“Get them.”
The breakthrough came at 1:17 in the morning.
Not from the hospital.
From Helen Mercer.
After hours of searching, Dominic discovered that the dead nurse had sent an encrypted email to herself two days before her fatal car accident.
The attachment had been deleted from her primary account but remained cached in an old cloud backup.
It contained twelve pages of handwritten notes.
Patient initials.
Dates.
Blood markers.
Procedure codes.
And one sentence repeated three times.
NO CONSENT.
Liana sat beside Dominic as he scrolled.
Her hands shook.
Then she saw the initials.
E.V.
Next to them: maternal complication.
Below them: N.V.
Next to Nico’s initials: retained for follow-up.
