Chapter 7 - The Birth Record Before the Birth
The hospital entered lockdown.
Elevators stopped between floors.
Security sealed the maternity wing.
A nurse disconnected my bed from the wall monitor and moved me toward the operating suite using battery power.
Roman walked beside me until the restricted doors.
“You cannot come farther until the team clears every credential,” Dr. Brooks told him.
“I am her husband.”
“And someone has already used your identity twice.”
Roman stopped.
He looked at me.
“Do you want me inside?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will wait for verification.”
The answer mattered more than forcing the door.
Security used physical photographs, live voice confirmation, and fingerprints collected in front of witnesses. Roman’s copied digital identity could not pass the new process.
He entered after seven minutes.
The fetal heart rate recovered while doctors prepared for possible surgery. Dr. Brooks decided to attempt stabilization first.
“The baby may remain inside if the pattern improves.”
I focused on breathing.
Roman held my hand.
Outside, federal technicians traced the false infant record transfer to Kane Memorial Women’s Center.
The user account belonged to Dr. Malcolm Reed.
His phone remained offline.
The access came from a terminal inside St. Catherine’s hospital, only two floors below us.
Someone had entered our hospital using Reed’s credentials.
Security searched the building.
A man wearing maintenance scrubs abandoned a laptop near the records office and escaped through a stairwell.
The camera showed Thomas Rourke.
The missing security chief.
His face was bruised.
One arm hung at an unnatural angle.
He did not appear to be moving freely.
A second person followed behind him, mostly outside the frame.
Rourke reached the records terminal and uploaded the prepared infant file.
Then he turned toward the hidden companion.
The audio captured his words.
“You said the child would be protected.”
The other person answered.
“She will be. Roman cannot raise an heir while he controls the board.”
The voice belonged to Adrian Kane.
Rourke had not escaped from the marina.
Adrian had kept him alive and used him to enter the hospital.
Rourke’s security credentials bypassed several private systems because he had designed them.
He may have believed transferring the baby’s record protected her from Roman.
Or Adrian threatened his family.
The camera showed Adrian forcing him into the stairwell at gunpoint.
Police searched every exit.
Neither man appeared outside.
They remained somewhere inside the hospital.
Dr. Brooks wanted to move me to another facility.
The roads were flooded.
A transfer during contractions created additional risk.
I refused to become cargo in another plan.
“We stay.”
Roman looked toward the ceiling.
“Then clear the entire building.”
Hospital administrators began moving unrelated patients away from the maternity wing while police searched room by room.
Martin obtained a court order declaring every prenatal and infant document created outside the current medical team invalid.
The trust council suspended activation until independent verification.
That should have removed the immediate financial incentive.
Adrian continued anyway.
The plan now involved more than shares.
An alert appeared from Kane Capital.
A group of directors had called an emergency meeting claiming Roman’s absence and family crisis endangered the company.
They proposed temporary control by Adrian.
Adrian could not appear publicly while hiding inside the hospital.
He did not need to.
A recorded message using his verified identity supported the motion.
The board had not been told he was a suspect.
Roman joined the meeting from the delivery room through a secure legal line.
He stood near the wall in a sterile gown while I listened.
One director described the estate events as a domestic dispute.
Another said investors feared Roman had become emotionally compromised.
Adrian’s representative argued the family council needed temporary stability.
Roman did not describe what Eleanor had done.
He played the mirror recording.
The board watched Adrian enter wearing the mask.
They heard him direct the assault.
The motion collapsed.
Three directors who supported Adrian immediately requested legal counsel.
Roman suspended every executive account connected to the false vote.
Kane Capital’s control remained with the independent committee until he could return.
Adrian lost the board path.
The hospital search narrowed.
A nurse reported hearing movement inside an unused neonatal storage room.
Police opened it.
They found Rourke tied to a chair, alive.
Adrian was gone.
Rourke said a hidden service tunnel connected the storage room to the old Kane Foundation research wing across the street.
The wing had been closed for renovation.
The tunnel did not appear on hospital plans.
Roman’s father had funded it thirty years earlier for private patient transfers.
Adrian knew.
Police entered the tunnel.
The contractions finally began slowing.
Dr. Brooks lowered the likelihood of immediate delivery but kept the surgical team nearby.
Rourke asked to speak with Roman.
Through a secure camera, he admitted helping Eleanor move me.
He received the false order under Roman’s identity.
When Nolan objected, Rourke restrained him.
Adrian stabbed Nolan.
Rourke then understood the command was false.
He attempted to help me reach the gate, but Eleanor threatened to have him arrested for kidnapping.
He placed me outside because Nolan’s message said Roman was minutes away.
“I believed you would see her,” he told Roman.
“You left a barefoot pregnant woman in freezing rain.”
“Yes.”
“Why not carry her to the road?”
“Adrian had my wife.”
Rourke’s wife, Melissa, had disappeared that morning.
Adrian sent him a live image showing her restrained inside an unknown room.
Rourke followed orders.
He still made choices.
Fear explained them.
It did not erase them.
“Where is Melissa?” Roman asked.
Rourke did not know.
He gave investigators the phrase Adrian used.
The first mother belongs beneath the house.
Roman became still.
His mother, Eleanor, had been taken from police interview during the hospital alarm.
A forged transfer order moved her into federal custody.
No federal agency received her.
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Adrian had removed Eleanor too.
Continue to the next part: Adrian loses control of the company but abducts Eleanor, claiming the first mother belongs beneath the Kane estate.
