The baby leaned toward her with surprising determination.
Something passed across Matteo’s face—confusion first, then disbelief, then a hesitation so deep it seemed to physically pull him backward.
Liana kept her voice soft. “He wants to come to me.”
Matteo said nothing.
Nico reached again.
Finally, Matteo stepped closer.
His movements were slow and controlled, as if every instinct he possessed warned him not to trust a stranger with the only person left in the world he could not afford to lose.
Liana took Nico carefully.
The moment his weight settled into her arms, the screaming stopped.
No gradual calming. No rocking. No song.
One second Nico was crying hard enough to shake his entire body.
The next, there was silence.
The sound vanished so completely that the mansion itself seemed startled by it.
Liana could hear the faint hum of the chandelier above them. Somewhere beyond the foyer, a clock ticked. One of the guards inhaled sharply.
Matteo stared.
Nico pressed his cheek against Liana’s chest and released a small, exhausted sigh. His fingers curled into the fabric of her red uniform as if he had been waiting for precisely that place.
Liana’s throat tightened.
She had promised herself she would never again allow her body to imagine the weight of her own baby in her arms. The memory hurt too much.
But holding Nico brought it back instantly.
The warmth.
The tiny breath against her collarbone.
The instinctive way her hand settled between his shoulder blades.
She closed her eyes for half a second and nearly broke.
Then Nico shifted.
Liana opened her eyes and noticed the first thing that did not make sense.
The collar of his cream sleeper had slipped slightly to one side. Beneath it, just above his left shoulder, was a pale mark no larger than the tip of her thumb.
Liana stared.
The air left her lungs.
Matteo noticed the change in her face immediately.
“What?”
Liana did not answer.
She moved the fabric aside carefully.
The mark was not a bruise. It was faint, almost silver beneath the skin, shaped like a small crescent with two tiny dots beside it.
Her hand began to tremble.
She had seen that exact shape before.
Twenty-two days earlier.
On her own child.
Matteo stepped closer. “What is it?”
Liana looked up slowly.
“Mr. Varric…”
Her voice cracked.
Matteo’s expression tightened. “What?”
Liana held Nico more securely.
“Who delivered your son?”
For several seconds, Matteo simply stared at her.
The question seemed so ordinary that one of the guards frowned.
Matteo did not.
His face changed.
Not much.
But Liana saw it.
A tiny stillness entered him, the kind that came when a man heard a sound behind a locked door he had convinced himself was empty.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Liana looked back at the mark.
“My baby had one.”
Matteo’s eyes sharpened.
“What?”
“The same mark.” She swallowed. “Same place. Same shape.”
The guard nearest them shook his head slightly, as though trying to make sense of what he was hearing.
Matteo stepped closer. “You’re saying your child had a birthmark?”
Liana shook her head.
“No.”
Her answer came too quickly.
She remembered the hospital room clearly now.
A nurse had changed the dressing near her child’s shoulder after a procedure. Liana had asked about the small crescent mark. The nurse had called it an access scar, nothing dangerous, something that happened during neonatal monitoring.
But later, after her baby’s condition worsened, another doctor had told her there had been no reason for that procedure to be performed at all.
Liana had been too overwhelmed to understand what that meant.
Then her child had died.
The hospital had called it an unexpected complication.
Grief had buried every unanswered question beneath a weight she could barely survive.
Until now.
Liana whispered, “It wasn’t there when he was born.”
Matteo’s gaze shifted to Nico.
The baby remained quiet in her arms.
Matteo’s voice lowered. “Explain.”
Liana closed her eyes briefly.
“My son was born at St. Catherine’s Medical Center.”
That was when Matteo stopped breathing.
Liana saw it happen.
His shoulders remained square. His face remained controlled.
But something in his eyes disappeared.
