For several seconds I could only stare at the old photograph.
Brad had told me earlier that his crescent mark appeared months after birth. Ricardo had said the same thing. Yet the infant labeled Daniel clearly carried a dark crescent behind his ear, while the baby labeled Brad did not.
“You’re saying you’re Daniel?” I asked.
Brad shook his head. “I’m saying I don’t know.”
“That is not better.”
“I’m aware.”
Detective Harris took the photograph and angled it toward her flashlight.
“Could the writing have been added later?”
“Of course.”
“Could the babies have been moved between bassinets before the picture?”
“Yes.”
“Then this proves almost nothing.”
Brad gave her a tired look.
“Unless you know my mother’s handwriting.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
He tapped the labels.
“That’s hers.”
“Then we ask her.”
His face hardened.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she has dementia.”
I stared at him.
“You never told me that.”
“She stopped recognizing me before our wedding.”
Another omission.
Another part of his life I had never been allowed to see.
Brad saw my expression.
“I know.”
“If you say that one more time—”
“I deserve whatever you want to call me, Clara.”
The anger almost escaped me. Instead I looked at my sleeping son.
“Later.”
Brad nodded.
The service route ended beneath the hospital’s old loading dock. Harris commandeered an unmarked police SUV after confirming through a secure line that the immediate entrances were compromised. Angela had been turned over to another unit. Whether she was truly a nurse, an infiltrator, or something between remained unclear.
I sat in the rear seat with my baby strapped into a hospital carrier that Harris insisted we borrow.
Brad sat beside me but left as much distance between us as the vehicle allowed.
It was the most Brad-like thing he had done.
He had always known when silence was safer than apology.
We drove north through rain.
Chicago thinned behind us into wet roads, dark storefronts, and eventually woodland.
Harris kept checking the mirrors.
“Anyone following?”
Brad looked back.
“Not obviously.”
“That phrase should never reassure anyone.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
The road narrowed.
I tried to feed the baby beneath the blanket while the SUV bounced through potholes. Exhaustion pulled at me hard enough that sometimes the headlights doubled in my vision.
Brad noticed.
“You need a hospital.”
“I had one.”
“A different hospital.”
“Where someone can access my records again?”
His mouth closed.
“That’s what I thought.”
After almost an hour, Harris turned onto a road so overgrown that branches scraped both sides of the SUV.
Brad directed her toward what looked like a wall of trees.
“There.”
“I see nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Behind a screen of pines stood an iron gate buried in ivy.
Brad got out.
Harris immediately followed with her weapon.
He removed one of Daniel’s keys and opened the rusted lock.
Beyond the gate, the drive wound through dense woods.
The house appeared suddenly.
It was large but neglected, built of dark stone with a deep porch and boarded upper windows. Moss covered parts of the roof. The place looked less abandoned than deliberately forgotten.
“That’s your grandmother’s house?” I asked.
Brad nodded.
“I spent summers here.”
“And everyone thinks it was demolished.”
“The company paid for demolition records. Property maps were changed.”
Harris looked at him.
“Your family does not solve problems normally.”
“No.”
Inside, the air smelled of wood, dust, and cold stone.
Brad found the electrical panel.
Nothing happened when he flipped the main switch.
“Generator,” he said.
He disappeared toward the back.
I stiffened.
Harris noticed.
“You want me to follow him?”
“No.”
That answer surprised both of us.
Several minutes later, lights flickered on.
Only a few lamps worked, casting warm circles through rooms draped in sheets.
Brad returned.
“There’s bottled water in the pantry. Heat should start soon.”
Harris checked every floor before allowing us to settle in the kitchen.
I sat at an old wooden table, feeding my son while Brad stood with his back to us.
“You can turn around,” I said.
He did slowly.
“You’ve seen me feed a baby before.”
“No.”
I almost laughed from sheer disbelief.
“You’ve missed his entire existence.”
His face changed.
“Right.”
The silence that followed felt different. Less angry. More dangerous.
Because grief was underneath it.
I looked down.
“He doesn’t have a name yet.”
Brad’s eyes lifted.
“What?”
“I couldn’t decide.”
He pulled out a chair but did not sit.
“What were you considering?”
“Elias.”
Brad closed his eyes briefly.
“My grandfather’s name.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
I looked at him sharply.
He corrected himself.
“I mean—I never told you.”
“Correct.”
“Do you like it?”
“I did.”
“And now?”
I watched our son yawn.
“I still do.”
Something softened in Brad’s face.
Harris interrupted from the doorway.
“You should both see this.”
She led us to the library.
One entire wall was covered by empty shelves.
At the center stood a desk with deep scratches near the floor.
Brad crouched.
“Daniel used to hide things in furniture.”
He pressed beneath the desktop.
A compartment opened.
Inside sat a portable hard drive, several notebooks, and a sealed medical envelope.
Brad touched the envelope first.
It had his mother’s name on it.
MARGARET SULLIVAN.
He opened it.
The papers inside were decades old.
Hospital forms.
Delivery records.
Two male infants.
I read over his shoulder.
Baby A.
Baby B.
Then another page.
A transfer authorization.
One infant had been moved to a research neonatal unit eighteen hours after birth.
“Why?” I asked.
Brad kept reading.
“Respiratory distress.”
“Was that true?”
“I don’t know.”
Harris opened a notebook.
“These initials appear again.”
R.S.
V.S.
D.M.
Trial references.
A project name.
ORPHEUS.
“What was Orpheus?” Harris asked.
Brad went still.
“I’ve heard that word.”
“Where?”
“When Daniel called me the week before he died.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if I remembered the story of Orpheus.”
I frowned.
“The man who went into the underworld for his wife?”
“Yes.”
“And looked back.”
Brad nodded.
“He told me our family had spent decades looking backward and pretending the dead could be brought back.”
Harris opened the laptop stored beneath the desk.
No power.
She connected it to an adapter from Daniel’s supplies.
The screen came on.
Password protected.
Brad tried several combinations.
None worked.
“What would Daniel use?” I asked.
“He hated obvious passwords.”
“Did you share something nobody else knew?”
Brad looked at me.
“We had a phrase when we were kids.”
He typed.
The desktop opened.
Hundreds of folders filled the screen.
Harris exhaled.
“Well.”
Brad clicked the newest file.
A recorded video appeared.
Daniel.
I knew immediately because he looked almost exactly like Brad.
The same eyes.
The same mouth.
But Daniel’s face was narrower, his hair shorter, his expression more severe.
The video timestamp was eight years old.
Daniel looked directly into the camera.
“If Brad finds this, things are worse than I hoped.”
Brad lowered himself into the chair.
Daniel continued.
“Dad lied about the neonatal unit. Mom never knew one of us was enrolled in Orpheus.”
Brad whispered, “What?”
“The project wasn’t about medication. It was about inheritance.”
I felt my skin turn cold.
Daniel held up records.
“The researchers were tracking a genetic marker associated with a rare blood-protein expression in male Sullivan descendants. They believed it could be used to predict response to a class of experimental therapies.”
Harris leaned closer.
Daniel’s voice continued.
“One infant tested positive. One didn’t.”
Brad touched the mark behind his ear.
“The crescent isn’t genetic by itself,” Daniel said on screen. “It was caused by an injected tracer used in the old protocol. They marked enrolled infants so staff could identify them before digital records existed.”
I stared at Brad.
“That’s why the mark appeared later.”
His face was white.
Daniel continued.
“Dad told us the crescent ran naturally in the family. That was a lie.”
Brad whispered, “No.”
The recording went on.
“The project should have died decades ago. It didn’t. Someone restarted it using Sullivan clinics and falsified consent documents. Children. Adults. Pregnant women.”
My arms tightened around Elias.
Pregnant women.
Daniel leaned toward the camera.
“I confronted Dad. He denied knowing. I believed him for exactly one day.”
Brad closed his eyes.
Daniel lifted another document.
“There are signatures approving transfers under Ricardo Sullivan’s credentials.”
Harris froze the image.
“So R.S. is Ricardo.”
“Maybe,” Brad said.
Daniel continued.
“But some signatures are wrong. The dates don’t match periods when Dad was even in the country. Someone has been using his identity for years.”
The room seemed to contract.
“Victor,” Brad said.
“Your uncle?” Harris asked.
Brad nodded slowly.
Daniel looked exhausted on the screen.
“If anything happens to me, don’t assume Dad did it. Don’t assume Victor did either. The person running Orpheus understands our family well enough to use us against each other.”
The video ended.
For several seconds nobody moved.
Then another file opened automatically.
A newer recording.
This one was dated three weeks before Daniel died.
He looked frightened.
“I found the original infant chart.”
Brad leaned forward.
Daniel swallowed.
“The labels were switched after the neonatal transfer.”
I stopped breathing.
“The child our parents raised as Brad was born Daniel.”
Brad stared at the screen.
“The child raised as Daniel was born Brad.”
The room disappeared around us.
Brad had lived thirty-six years under his brother’s name.
Daniel continued.
“I don’t know why they switched us. But I know why it matters now.”
He raised a legal document.
“The Sullivan trust was written before our birth. Control does not pass to the oldest surviving son by name. It passes by recorded birth order and blood classification.”
Harris whispered, “Which means…”
Daniel nodded toward the camera as if answering her across time.
“If the original records are restored, Brad—the man everyone calls Brad—controls the trust.”
My husband stared at the frozen image of his twin.
“And if he has a son,” Daniel added, “the line continues through that child.”
My hand went instinctively to Elias’s head.
A sound came from upstairs.
A floorboard creaked.
Harris drew her weapon.
Brad shut the laptop.
Another creak.
Closer to the stairs.
“Stay here,” Harris whispered.
“No,” Brad said.
He took a fireplace poker.
“You have a gun,” I hissed at Harris. “You handle this.”
She started toward the hall.
The kitchen window shattered.
A round struck the wall.
Brad threw himself over me and the baby.
Harris fired toward the darkness outside.
Then headlights ignited through the trees.
Three vehicles.
Doors opening.
Men moving.
Brad looked toward the hidden records.
“They followed us.”
“How?”
Harris checked her phone.
No signal.
Brad’s eyes shifted toward the hospital carrier.
Then toward the blanket Angela had placed around us earlier.
He ripped it away.
A tiny black device fell onto the floor.
A tracker.
Brad crushed it beneath his shoe.
“They didn’t follow us.”
He looked at me.
“They sent the location with our son.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: Trapped Inside a House That Officially Did Not Exist, We Learned Daniel Had Planned for the Night His Killers Returned
The Doctor Cried When He Saw My Newborn Son—Then He Told Me My Husband Was Never Gone
Part 6 of 15
