Chapter 4 - THE MIDNIGHT CONFESSION
The digital clock on the nurses' station read 4:45 a.m. Sofia had managed to put the files back, though her hands were shaking so badly she dropped a pen twice. She couldn't go home. She couldn't pretend she didn't know. Every beep of the monitor in room 3 felt like a countdown timer.
She walked down the private wing. Dante Marchetti was still there, slumped in the chair by the window, his eyes bloodshot and hollow. Hearing her approach, he didn't look up immediately, but his body tightened, muscles coiling like a spring.
"I told you to go away," Dante muttered without turning his head. "I don't need a nurse hovering right now."
"I'm not here to check his vitals, Mr. Marchetti," Sofia said. Her voice was barely a whisper, but there was an intensity to it that finally made Dante turn his head.
He looked up, frowning at the pale, determined expression on her face. "What are you talking about?"
"You need to listen to me, and you cannot raise your voice, and you cannot touch anything," Sofia said rapidly, pulling a chair over and sitting directly in front of him, blocking his view of the incubator. "Nineteen days ago, your wife died on the street. Your son was supposedly cut from her on the asphalt and brought straight here."
Dante's eyes narrowed dangerously, a dark storm brewing in his irises. "Get to the point, Nurse."
"That baby in there," Sofia pointed a trembling finger toward the glass box, "is not your son."
The silence that followed was absolute. The beeping of the heart monitor seemed to grow deafeningly loud. Dante didn't move. He didn't yell. For a terrifying second, Sofia thought he might have stopped breathing entirely. Then, slowly, he stood up. At six feet two inches, he towered over her, his presence suffocating the room.
"Repeat that," Dante said, his voice dropping into a register so low and flat it was terrifying.
"I checked the footprints. I checked the intake records. The baby in that incubator does not match the physical markers recorded at birth, and the records have been manipulated," Sofia said, her words tumbling out fast and urgent. "Dr. Croft knows. He threatened me five minutes ago. Someone switched your son the night of the bomb, Dante. Your real baby is somewhere else."
Dante stared at her. He looked for any sign of hysteria, any flicker of a lie, any hesitation. He found nothing except a raw, terrifying honesty.
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"If this is a sick joke," Dante whispered, his hand gripping the back of the chair so hard the wood groaned, "I will pull you apart piece by piece."
"It's not a joke," Sofia said, looking him straight in the eye. "Now, are you going to sit there and watch a stranger's child die, or are you going to help me find your son?"
