Chapter 4 - The Girl Who Never Died
Hannah barely slept.
At dawn, she sat beside Giovanni's bed while the house nurse prepared his medication. The old man had exhausted himself trying to communicate, but he refused to let Hannah leave.
She held the hospital form in both hands.
“My sister was eight,” she whispered. “If she was transferred, why didn't anyone tell me?”
Giovanni looked at her with a grief so profound that she almost wished he would turn away.
She had spent six years imagining Elena's last moments. She had replayed every unanswered question, every bill, every desperate conversation with doctors.
Now she wondered whether she had mourned a death that never happened.
“Did you arrange the transfer?” she asked.
Giovanni slowly shook his head.
“Did Lorenzo know?”
Another shake.
“Then who did?”
The old man reached for his notepad.
With great effort, he wrote a single word.
MERCER.
Lorenzo entered the room as Hannah read it aloud.
“Mercer?” he repeated.
He knew the name. Richard Mercer had served as his father's financial adviser for almost thirty years. After Giovanni's stroke, Mercer had managed several family trusts and helped oversee the transition of the business.
He had also recommended Vanessa as a suitable partner for Lorenzo.
“Mercer handled the charitable foundation's accounts,” Lorenzo said. “If money was used to move Elena, he'd have seen the transaction.”
Hannah stood.
“Then we find him.”
Lorenzo studied her expression.
“You don't know what you're walking into.”
“My sister vanished while I was still a teenager. Someone made me believe she was dead. If your family knows something, I have a right to hear it.”
“You do.”
“Then don't tell me to stay behind.”
Lorenzo looked at Giovanni.
His father gave a small, decisive nod.
“Fine,” Lorenzo said. “But you stay beside me, and you follow my instructions.”
They found Richard Mercer at a private club in Manhattan, seated at a table overlooking Central Park. At sixty-five, he wore a perfectly tailored gray suit and the expression of a man who believed nothing could surprise him.
That expression vanished when he saw Hannah.
“You,” he whispered.
Hannah sat opposite him.
“You know me?”
Mercer reached for his glass but didn't drink.
“I knew your sister.”
“Where is she?”
“I can't answer that.”
Lorenzo placed the hospital form on the table.
“You signed the financial authorization for the Bellamy Foundation six years ago. Vanessa signed the transfer. Dr. Reed died that night. Start talking.”
Mercer looked toward the club entrance.
Two of Lorenzo's men stood there.
“I never ordered anyone killed,” he said.
“That's not what I asked.”
Mercer lowered his voice.
“Your uncle Antonio discovered that someone had been using the foundation to move vulnerable children into private care facilities. Some were legitimate placements. Others weren't.”
Hannah felt sick.
“Children were being taken?”
“Not all of them were taken against their will. Some were moved under false identities. Their records were altered, and their families were told different stories.”
Lorenzo's face hardened.
“Who ran it?”
Mercer looked at him with reluctant pity.
“Your father discovered the scheme too late. He tried to stop it. Antonio wanted to expose everyone involved, but someone inside the family betrayed him.”
“Who?”
Mercer opened his mouth.
A sharp crack shattered the window behind him.
Lorenzo threw Hannah to the floor as glass exploded across the table. Mercer's chair toppled backward.
For a moment, all Hannah heard was ringing.
Then Lorenzo rose, weapon drawn, and dragged her behind a concrete pillar. His men rushed outside.
Mercer lay motionless beside the overturned chair.
Blood spread across his shirt.
Hannah crawled toward him.
“Mr. Mercer!”
His eyes fluttered open.
He gripped her wrist with surprising strength.
“The girl,” he whispered. “The girl is alive.”
Hannah stopped breathing.
“Where?”
Mercer struggled to speak.
“St. Agnes. The old children's wing. Room seventeen.”
His hand fell away.
Lorenzo checked for a pulse.
Nothing.
The club erupted into shouting. Security personnel rushed through the entrance, and someone called for an ambulance, though Lorenzo knew it was too late.
He helped Hannah stand.
“St. Agnes is closed,” he said. “It was shut down years ago.”
“Then why did he name it?”
“Because something there was important enough to kill him over.”
They drove to the abandoned hospital under heavy security.
The building stood behind a rusted fence on the edge of Queens, its windows boarded and its sign barely visible beneath climbing vines. Hannah climbed out before the car had fully stopped.
Lorenzo caught her arm.
“Wait for my men.”
She looked at him.
“If Elena is there, every second matters.”
They entered through a side door. Dust covered the corridor, and the air smelled of damp plaster. Their flashlights swept across empty examination rooms and broken wheelchairs.
Room seventeen was at the end of the old children's wing.
Its door was locked.
Lorenzo forced it open.
Inside, the walls were covered with faded drawings. A small wooden bed stood beneath a window, and a paper star hung from the ceiling.
Hannah recognized the star immediately.
She had made hundreds of them for Elena when they were children.
On the windowsill lay a sealed envelope.
Her name was written across it.
Inside was a recent photograph of a young woman with dark curls, standing beside a lake.
She looked older, thinner, but unmistakably alive.
On the back, someone had written:
HANNAH, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, DON'T TRUST THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU HERE.
Hannah slowly turned toward Lorenzo.
His face was unreadable.
Then a door slammed behind them.
The hallway lights flickered on.
And a woman's voice came through the old hospital's intercom.
May you like
“Hello, Hannah.”
It was Vanessa.
