Chapter 2 - The Photograph That Rewrote The Past
Dr. Harris stood next to her.
His hand rested on Anna’s shoulder.
But that wasn’t what made the breath leave my lungs.
It was Anna’s hands.
They were resting on her stomach.
She was heavily, unmistakably pregnant.
I looked at Luca.
He had stopped breathing. His hands hovered over the photograph, trembling, refusing to touch it as if the paper itself would burn him.
“Luca,” I whispered.
He didn’t hear me.
“She had cancer,” Luca said to the empty room. “They told me it was stage four. They said the treatments would make her lose her hair, so she refused to let me see her. She locked herself in the west wing.”
His voice cracked.
“She wasn’t dying. She was pregnant.”
Marco stepped closer, his face completely pale. “Boss. Look at the bottom right corner.”
I leaned in.
The photograph had a digital timestamp in bright orange numbers.
October 14th.
Eleven years ago.
The room spun. I looked at Luca, whose eyes were wide with a horrifying realization.
“Anna died twelve years ago,” Luca choked out.
“No,” I said softly. “She didn’t.”
This was the lie.
The absolute, terrifying lie that someone had spun to dismantle this man’s life. Anna hadn’t died of cancer twelve years ago. She had lived at least another year. Long enough to carry a child.
“Where is my wife?” Luca roared, the sound tearing through the dusty clinic.
He grabbed the nearest locked cabinet and ripped the doors open with his bare hands. Glass shattered. Medical files spilled across the floor.
“Mr. Moretti, stop!” I yelled, grabbing his arm.
He shoved me off, his grief turning into a violent, blind rage. He tore through the room, overturning the examination table, throwing chairs against the wall.
He was a man realizing he had mourned a ghost.
“Luca!” I screamed, stepping directly in his path.
He stopped, his chest heaving, his dark eyes wild.
“You are having a hypoglycemic crash,” I said firmly, keeping my voice dead level. “Your adrenaline is spiking, but your blood sugar is tanking. If you pass out now, whoever did this wins. Do you understand me?”
He stared at me. The wildness slowly receded, replaced by a cold, lethal focus.
“I have a child,” he whispered.
“We don’t know that yet,” I said.
“She was pregnant, Emma.”
“And we need to find out what happened,” I said, picking up the fallen photograph.
That’s when I noticed the third person in the picture.
Standing in the background, partially obscured by a medical curtain, was a young woman.
She was holding a folded blue baby blanket.
It was Vanessa.
She didn’t look seventeen. She looked exactly as Maria had said—twenty-one. Mature. Complicit.
“She knew,” Luca said, staring over my shoulder at Vanessa’s face. “She moved into my house. She slept in my bed. And she knew my wife was alive.”
Suddenly, Marco’s radio cracked.
“Sir,” a guard’s voice echoed. “Vanessa’s room is secure, but the guest bathroom window is broken. She’s gone.”
Luca didn’t yell this time. He just pulled his gun from his shoulder holster.
Before he could speak, a faint, rhythmic sound echoed in the quiet room.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It was coming from inside the unplugged, rusted medical refrigerator in the corner of the room.
Luca raised his weapon. Marco drew his.
I stepped back, my medical bag clutched to my chest.
Luca grabbed the heavy metal handle of the refrigerator. He yanked it open.
There was no body inside.
Instead, sitting on the wire shelf, was a small, silver digital recorder.
It was playing on a loop.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I reached in and pressed the play button.
A woman’s voice filled the room. It was weak, raspy, and terrified.
“Luca,” the voice wept. “If you find this… they took him. Victor took our son. Please, Luca. Don’t trust Dr. Harris. Don’t trust—”
The recording cut to static.
Luca dropped the gun. It clattered heavily against the linoleum floor.
He fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands as the sound of his dead wife’s voice echoed into the silence.
Then, my cell phone rang.
I pulled it from my pocket. It was my mother’s number.
I answered it. “Mom?”
“Hello, Nurse Reed,” a man’s voice said smoothly.
My blood turned to ice.
“Dr. Harris,” I breathed.
May you like
“Your mother is making a lovely pot of tea,” Harris said. “I suggest you and Mr. Moretti bring Vanessa’s black case to the old shipyard by midnight. Or your mother won’t be needing a nurse ever again.”
TITLE: The Doctor’s Final House Call
