Chapter 3 - THE YEAR I COULD NOT REMEMBER
I laughed once.
The sound came out wrong.
“Sophie is five. I have never been pregnant.”
No one answered.
I looked from Dominic to Eleanor.
“Say something.”
Eleanor stood slowly.
“Brielle, do you remember the hospital after Claire disappeared?”
“I was never in a hospital.”
Dominic’s expression told me otherwise.
My memories of that year had always felt damaged near the edges.
Claire disappeared in October.
I remembered police interviews, missing posters, and my mother sleeping beside the telephone.
Then winter became fragments.
A white ceiling.
The smell of antiseptic.
My mother telling me I had been sick.
I believed grief had caused the missing time.
“What happened to me?”
Dominic spoke carefully.
“Three weeks after Claire disappeared, you followed one of Carlo’s men.”
I remembered a black vehicle outside our apartment.
I remembered running through rain.
Then nothing.
“You reached a warehouse used by the witness program,” he continued. “Carlo’s men found you inside.”
“Did they hurt me?”
“They drugged you.”
Vincent stepped closer to Dominic.
“How long was she held?”
“Four days.”
My stomach tightened.
“What happened during those four days?”
“I was not allowed inside the medical room.”
“Medical room?”
Dominic looked toward Eleanor.
“Carlo employed a physician named Nathan Vale. Vale conducted reproductive procedures for clients who wanted children without public records.”
The room became colder.
I understood the words separately.
Together, they refused to form a meaning.
“You are saying someone used my body.”
“We do not know that,” Eleanor said quickly.
Dominic did not protect me with uncertainty.
“Carlo ordered biological samples taken.”
“What kind of samples?”
“Egg retrieval.”
My injured hand began shaking.
Vincent moved toward me.
I stepped away.
“Do not touch me.”
He stopped immediately.
Dominic continued.
“Afterward, you were taken to a private clinic. Your mother was told you suffered a breakdown and attempted to harm yourself.”
“She believed that?”
“She saw you sedated.”
My mother had spent years blaming herself for failing both daughters.
Carlo manufactured evidence that I was unstable and used her fear to keep us silent.
“What does this have to do with Sophie?”
Dominic looked toward Vincent.
“Claire discovered a file shortly before she disappeared. It described an embryo created from Brielle’s genetic material.”
“And the father?” Vincent asked.
“Unknown.”
Eleanor whispered:
“Edwin’s paternity report.”
The report stating Vincent was not Sophie’s father might have been true.
Claire may have carried and raised a child created from my stolen genetic material.
I looked at Sophie.
She stood beside the chair with the crushed flower gone from her hand.
I was holding it.
Her lower lip trembled.
“Are you still my aunt?”
The question broke through the horror.
I knelt despite the pain in my knees.
“Yes.”
“Even if the papers say something else?”
“Yes.”
“Is Daddy still my daddy?”
I looked toward Vincent.
His expression had changed for the first time.
Not anger.
Fear.
“He has been your father every day,” I said.
Sophie looked relieved enough to breathe.
Vincent crouched beside her.
“No paper changes who comes when you call.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck.
He held her with both hands.
I turned away because the tenderness hurt more than the violence.
Dominic requested access to Carlo’s sealed archives.
Vincent refused to release him.
“You remain under guard.”
“Then bring the records here.”
The archive occupied a hidden room beneath the Moretti family residence.
Vincent took Eleanor, Sophie, Dominic, and me through a private garage guarded by men whose loyalty had become uncertain.
The city looked normal beyond the tinted windows.
People walked dogs.
Restaurants closed for the evening.
Somewhere between the streetlights and apartment windows, my sister might still be alive.
I had spent eleven years believing the worst thing Carlo took from me was Claire.
Now I did not know where the theft ended.
The Moretti residence stood behind stone walls near Lake Michigan.
Inside, the halls were quiet enough to make footsteps sound like warnings.
Vincent settled Sophie in a secure room with a caregiver Eleanor trusted.
The child refused to release his sleeve.
“Are you coming back?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
He removed a black ring from his right hand and placed it in her palm.
“This belonged to my father. I will return for it.”
Sophie closed her fist.
The gesture reminded me of the way she held the yellow flower.
Vincent noticed me watching.
“I do not use children to hold promises,” he said.
“Then why give her the ring?”
“So she knows I left something I intend to recover.”
We entered the underground archive.
Steel cabinets lined both walls. Each drawer contained names, photographs, financial records, and identities Carlo had controlled.
Dominic guided us toward a cabinet marked with a single letter.
D.
Dawson.
The drawer was empty.
Vincent stared at him.
“You said the record was here.”
“It was.”
A fresh scratch marked the lock.
Someone had opened it recently.
Security reviewed the access system.
Only three people entered the archive during the previous month.
Vincent.
Eleanor.
And Gabriel Kane, Vincent’s most trusted security commander.
The same man Sophie pointed toward at the restaurant.
I had assumed she meant Dominic.
Gabriel had been standing behind him near the exit.
“Where is Gabriel?” Vincent asked.
A guard checked his phone.
“He left the residence nine minutes ago.”
“Find him.”
Inside the empty drawer, I noticed a small strip of blue fabric caught beneath the metal edge.
It matched the torn blue hoodie recovered beside the masked attacker.
I pulled it free.
A white label had been sewn inside.
CLAIRE DAWSON.
My sister’s original name.
The fabric smelled faintly of smoke and lavender.
Claire used lavender soap when we were children.
A hidden compartment opened beneath the drawer.
Inside was a medical photograph of a newborn girl.
The infant had a yellow identification band around her wrist.
The name printed on it was not Sophie Moretti.
It was Brielle Dawson.
The date belonged to five years earlier.
On the back, someone had written:
May you like
THE MOTHER MUST NEVER REMEMBER THE SECOND PROCEDURE.
Continue to the next part: Brielle discovers that the stolen procedure did not end when she was sixteen and that someone may have used her again five years ago.
