Chapter 9 - The Baby Comes Early
The contractions started in the ambulance.
Mara screamed into a towel while Claire held her hand and apologized every thirty seconds for reasons that did not make sense.
“I should’ve hit him sooner.”
“Claire.”
“I should’ve called the police.”
“Claire.”
“I should’ve—”
“Stop talking.”
Claire nodded, crying.
“Okay.”
Two seconds later: “Sorry.”
Mara laughed, then screamed again.
At the hospital, everything moved too quickly.
The baby’s heart rate dipped.
Dr. Kim was already on shift.
“Mara, we may need a C-section.”
“Do it.”
“I need you to understand—”
“Do it.”
The room filled with blue gowns and bright lights.
Mara asked for Teresa.
Nobody knew why.
Maybe because Teresa had held on when everyone else let go.
The surgery blurred.
Pressure. Cold. Voices.
Then a tiny cry.
Thin as paper.
Mara sobbed.
“Is she okay?”
A nurse smiled behind her mask. “She’s here.”
A girl.
Four pounds, one ounce.
They let Mara see her for three seconds before rushing the baby to NICU.
“Name?” a nurse asked.
Mara had planned on Olivia Cross.
She looked toward Claire.
“June,” Mara whispered.
Claire covered her mouth.
“June Bennett.”
The nurse paused. “Last name Bennett?”
“Yes.”
It was not a legal strategy. It did not cancel the trust. It was simply the first decision Mara made about her daughter without asking Daniel.
She needed that.
Hours later, Detective Hale arrived.
“Daniel’s missing.”
“Of course.”
“We found his car near the river.”
Mara’s stomach tightened. “Did he—”
“No body.”
“Good.”
Hale looked surprised.
“I want him alive,” Mara said. “Alive people answer questions.”
Hale nodded.
Then his expression changed.
“What?”
“We recovered the banker box from his car.”
Mara sat up despite the pain.
“And?”
“Most of the documents were gone.”
“Most?”
“One envelope was left.”
He handed her a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a birth certificate.
Not hers.
Not June’s.
A baby boy born twenty-nine years earlier.
Mother: Evelyn Cross.
Father: Charles Cross.
Child: Daniel Cross.
Mara frowned. “So?”
Hale pointed to the bottom.
A handwritten amendment had been stapled to the record.
Daniel was not Charles Cross’s biological son.
And if that was true, then Mara’s newborn daughter was not legally tied to the Cross bloodline at all.
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Which meant someone had tried to kill her for an inheritance the baby might never receive.
