The Woman Who Carried His Dead Daughter

CHAPTER 2 - The Death Certificate Signed Too Early

Paramedics examined Sophia in the ballroom.

She was cold and heavily sedated, but alive.

Adrian accompanied her to a public hospital. Mara sat across from him in the ambulance, refusing to release the child until the paramedics promised she would not be returned to Saint Catherine's.

At the hospital, doctors discovered a powerful sedative in Sophia's blood. It had slowed her breathing enough to make her appear lifeless during a careless examination.

Adrian stared through the intensive-care window.

Sophia was all he had left of his late wife, Natalie.

Natalie died from complications shortly after giving birth. Before her death, she repeatedly warned Adrian not to trust Camila, the Vale Group's chief financial officer.

Adrian dismissed the warnings.

Camila had been Natalie's closest friend since college. She handled the family's finances, arranged Sophia's surgery, and comforted Adrian after Natalie's death.

Three months later, she became his companion.

That afternoon, Camila stood beside him when Dr. Hale announced that Sophia had died.

Mara explained what happened afterward.

She was leaving through the clinic's service entrance when she saw Camila's car beside the waste area. Camila opened the rear door and placed a wrapped bundle inside a large container.

After the car left, Mara heard a faint cry.

She climbed into the container and found Sophia beneath bags of discarded linens.

"I recognized her from the pediatric ward," Mara said. "I washed her blankets every morning."

"Why did you not call the clinic?"

"Because Dr. Hale came outside searching for her. He was not calling the police. He was telling security that a dangerous employee had stolen a body."

Mara ran with Sophia through an alley. She saw the Vale Group banners outside the nearby hotel and remembered that Adrian was expected to attend the gala.

Detectives searched the clinic.

Dr. Hale had disappeared, but they found a death certificate signed before Sophia received her final medication.

They also recovered deleted security footage showing Camila entering the restricted pediatric wing.

Adrian thought the evidence could not become worse.

Then investigators opened Natalie's trust documents.

Sophia owned thirty percent of the Vale Group.

If the child died, those shares returned to Adrian.

Camila had prepared papers transferring Adrian's voting authority to herself immediately after their planned marriage.

Camila had not tried to erase Sophia because she hated the baby. She had done it because the child stood between her and a billion-dollar empire.