The guard behind him immediately looked toward Matteo.
Liana noticed.
“You know it.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“My wife delivered there.”
The words seemed to make the room colder.
Liana looked at Nico.
“When?”
“Ten months ago.”
Her pulse quickened.
“My son was treated there afterward.”
Matteo’s attention snapped back to her. “For what?”
Liana hesitated.
This was the part she had spent three weeks refusing to think about.
“He was healthy at birth. Then they said there was a problem with his blood oxygen. They moved him to another ward. After that, everything happened fast.”
Matteo’s face became unreadable.
“What doctor?”
Liana searched her memory.
“Dr. Adrian Bell.”
The guard on Matteo’s right visibly stiffened.
Matteo noticed.
Liana noticed too.
She looked between them.
“What?”
Matteo turned to the guard. “Why did you react?”
The man hesitated.
“Sir.”
“Answer me.”
The guard lowered his voice. “Dr. Bell consulted on Mrs. Varric’s case.”
Silence.
Liana felt Nico’s fingers tighten around her uniform.
Matteo looked down at his son.
His wife, Elena, had died three hours after giving birth.
That fact had appeared in newspapers, though the details had been vague. Hemorrhage. Sudden complications. Medical team unable to stabilize her.
Matteo had accepted none of it easily.
For months he had questioned doctors, hospital administrators, nurses, and private investigators. He had demanded records and hired specialists to review them. Every answer pointed in the same direction.
A tragic medical event.
No foul play.
No negligence sufficient to prove.
Eventually, even Matteo Varric had run out of doors to break down.
The case closed.
The doctors moved on.
Only Matteo did not.
He had simply stopped speaking about it.
Now a maid he had known for less than ten minutes was holding his son and saying the same doctor might somehow connect their children.
Matteo looked toward the nearest guard.
“Wake Dominic.”
The guard reached immediately for his phone.
Liana shifted Nico against her shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
Matteo looked at her.
“Reopening a door I should never have closed.”
Within twenty minutes, the mansion was fully awake.
Lights burned in the study. Phones rang behind closed doors. Two additional security men arrived from the lower level, followed by Dominic Hale, Matteo’s longtime attorney and fixer, who entered wearing trousers, an unbuttoned dress shirt, and the irritated expression of a man accustomed to emergencies but not to being summoned before dawn.
He stopped when he saw Liana sitting on a leather sofa with Nico sleeping against her.
“Who is she?”
Matteo stood beside the fireplace.
“Someone who may have just changed everything.”
Dominic looked unimpressed.
Matteo placed a hand on the desk.
“Get me everything from Elena’s hospital file. Originals, duplicate scans, nursing logs, medication records, delivery-room staff, neonatal staff, security access records.”
Dominic blinked.
“You already investigated that hospital.”
