Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW THE TRUTH
Her name was Lydia Perez.
She had held my hand while I gave birth.
I remembered that clearly.
Grant had been standing near the window, furious that labor had taken twelve hours.
When the first baby came, Lydia smiled.
“A girl.”
Grant’s face had gone blank.
Three minutes later, Rose arrived.
“Another girl.”
That was when something inside him changed.
At least, that was what I believed.
Now I wondered whether his hatred had begun years earlier.
Elias sent a security team to Lydia’s apartment in Washington Heights.
Police were already there.
No body.
No sign of forced entry.
Blood in the bathroom.
Broken phone in the kitchen.
And one missing laptop.
“She knew something,” I said.
We were in Elias’s study.
Emma slept in a bassinet beside me.
Rose rested against my chest.
Elias stood behind his desk while Marcus projected security footage onto a wall screen.
“We pulled building cameras.”
A grainy image showed Lydia leaving her apartment at 2:13 a.m.
She carried a backpack.
She looked over her shoulder twice.
Then a man appeared behind her.
My stomach tightened.
Grant.
“No.”
Marcus paused the image.
The man wore a baseball cap, but I knew that walk.
That posture.
That confident swing of his shoulders.
“He followed her?”
“Looks that way.”
“What happened next?”
“They exit camera range.”
Elias stared at the screen.
“Traffic cameras.”
“Working on it.”
I looked at him.
“We need to find her.”
“We will.”
“What if Grant already did?”
Elias did not offer false comfort.
“Then time matters.”
For the next four hours, the penthouse turned into something I barely understood.
Phones ringing.
Investigators coming and going.
Lawyers calling hospitals.
Marcus coordinating with police contacts.
Elias moved through all of it with terrifying efficiency.
I began to understand why people feared him.
He did not raise his voice.
He simply gave instructions and expected reality to rearrange itself.
At three in the afternoon, Marcus entered carrying a tablet.
“Found Lydia.”
I stood too quickly.
Pain shot across my back.
“Where?”
“Port Authority.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Relief almost dropped me to my knees.
“She bought a bus ticket to Philadelphia under her sister’s name. Our people stopped her before boarding.”
“Bring her here.”
Marcus looked at Elias.
“She’s terrified.”
“So am I,” I said.
Both men turned toward me.
“Bring her.”
An hour later, Lydia walked into the penthouse wearing a borrowed coat and carrying no bag.
She looked ten years older than she had six days earlier.
When she saw me, she burst into tears.
“Ava.”
I stood.
She covered her mouth.
“Oh, thank God.”
I hugged her.
Carefully.
She held on as though she had expected never to see me alive again.
“I’m sorry,” she kept whispering.
“I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
She pulled away.
Her face crumpled.
“I should have called the police that night.”
My body went cold.
“What did you see?”
Lydia looked toward Elias.
He stepped back.
“This is between you and Ava unless she wants otherwise.”
I nodded.
“Stay.”
Lydia sat.
Her hands shook.
“After the babies were born, Grant asked everyone to leave the room.”
I remembered.
“He said he wanted privacy.”
Lydia nodded.
“I came back because I forgot my chart tablet.”
She swallowed.
“The door wasn’t completely closed.”
My heart pounded.
“What did you hear?”
“Grant was on the phone.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he say?”
Lydia looked at my daughters.
“He said, ‘Two girls. The agreement is useless now.’”
The room became very quiet.
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“He told whoever was on the phone that there needed to be another solution.”
Elias’s eyes sharpened.
“Exact words?”
Lydia thought.
“He said, ‘If Ava disappears before thirty, guardianship gives me access until they’re adults.’”
My blood turned to ice.
“He planned to kill me?”
Lydia began crying.
“I didn’t know that then. I thought it was some kind of financial argument.”
She looked ashamed.
“Then I heard him say one more thing.”
“What?”
“‘Whitmore can handle the paperwork.’”
Elias’s expression hardened.
Charles Whitmore.
The banker.
The man waiting to profit from Grant’s collapse.
“What happened after that?” I asked.
Lydia wiped her face.
“I walked away before Grant saw me.”
“But you knew something was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“I reported the conversation to the hospital administrator.”
“And?”
“She told me it was a domestic financial issue and none of our business.”
Elias’s jaw tightened.
Lydia continued.
“The next morning, I went to your room.”
“I was gone.”
“Yes.”
Her voice broke.
“Grant told staff you had suffered a postpartum episode and left voluntarily with the babies.”
I stared at her.
“No one looked for us?”
“I did.”
“You knew where?”
“No.”
“Then how did Grant find out you were suspicious?”
Lydia reached into her pocket.
“I kept something.”
She handed me a tiny plastic hospital bracelet.
The print was faded.
BABY GIRL MILLER B.
Rose’s bracelet.
“I found this under the bed after you disappeared.”
I turned it over.
A small handwritten mark was visible inside.
A blue dot.
“What is that?”
“I put it there.”
“Why?”
Lydia breathed slowly.
“Because an hour after the birth, someone ordered replacement identification bands for both babies.”
Elias stepped closer.
“Who?”
“Dr. Vale.”
Silence.
“He wasn’t my doctor,” I said.
“No.”
“Why would he order replacement bands?”
“That’s why I marked Rose’s.”
Lydia looked at me.
“I was afraid someone might switch them.”
My entire body went numb.
Elias took the bracelet.
“You think that was the original plan?”
“Yes.”
Lydia nodded toward my daughters.
“I think Grant expected one of your babies to be replaced before you left the hospital.”
“Replaced with whose?”
We all knew.
Rebecca Shaw’s baby.
The infant born six weeks earlier.
Elias looked at Marcus.
“Get DNA testing done today. Independent labs. Chain of custody documented.”
Marcus nodded.
I stared at Lydia.
“What happened last night?”
She looked frightened again.
“Grant came to my apartment.”
“What did he want?”
“The bracelet.”
I glanced at the plastic band in Elias’s hand.
“You kept it?”
“I knew it might matter.”
“What did he do?”
“He hit me.”
Her voice shrank.
“He searched the apartment. I locked myself in the bathroom and climbed down the fire escape.”
“The blood?”
“I cut my arm on the window.”
She lifted her sleeve.
Bandages covered her forearm.
“I ran.”
I reached for her hand.
“You came here instead of going to police?”
“I didn’t know who I could trust.”
Her eyes moved toward Elias.
“Then I saw the news online.”
“What news?”
Marcus turned a tablet toward us.
A headline filled the screen.
BILLIONAIRE ELIAS VANCE ACCUSED OF HIDING MISSING MOTHER AND NEWBORNS.
Below it was a photograph of me.
An old one.
Taken before I married Grant.
The article claimed I was emotionally unstable.
That Elias had interfered in a domestic custody dispute.
That Grant was a devastated father begging for his children’s return.
My stomach twisted.
“They made him the victim.”
Elias barely looked at the article.
“That’s temporary.”
Marcus’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“DNA lab.”
“That fast?”
“They ran an expedited preliminary comparison.”
I stood.
“And?”
Marcus looked directly at me.
“Both twins are yours.”
I closed my eyes.
Relief flooded me.
Then Marcus continued.
“But there’s another result.”
Elias frowned.
“What result?”
“The lab compared the twins against the sample from Grant that his attorney voluntarily submitted for the custody filing.”
I stopped breathing.
Marcus looked at me.
May you like
“Grant Miller is not their biological father.”
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