Chapter 5 - The Architect of Shadows
By midnight, the children had finally fallen asleep, completely exhausted, curled up in a tangled pile of blankets on the oversized sofa in the nursery with me sitting vigilantly beside them, stroking their hair.
Roman sat across the room in a leather armchair, a glass of amber whiskey untouched on the side table. The harsh overhead lights were off, illuminated only by the soft glow of a star-projector rotating gently on the ceiling.
"Donovan traced the financial wire," Roman said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion, though the muscle in his jaw twitched. "Fourteen months ago, Saint Jude Memorial received an anonymous endowment of five million dollars through an offshore shell corporation. The exact same week, Dr. Arthur Harrison purchased his estate in the Caymans."
I looked up from the sleeping children, my eyes burning. "He sold them. He told me they died, and he handed them over to you as surrogacy orphans."
"Not just surrogacy orphans," Roman corrected, his voice dropping into a dark, dangerous register. "Harrison ran a black-market adoption ring targeting vulnerable, low-income mothers in municipal hospitals. If a mother was single, struggling, or recovering from a traumatic emergency delivery, his team classified the infants as medical fatalities, falsified the death certificates, and rerouted the healthy babies to high-paying clients under fabricated confidential files."
A cold shudder ran down my spine. "He did this to hundreds of women."
"He did do this," Roman emphasized, standing up and walking toward the window overlooking the dark expanse of Lake Michigan. "As of two hours ago, Dr. Harrison’s villa in the Caymans was visited by two of my associates. He is currently on a private cargo flight back to Chicago, courtesy of my security logistics. By sunrise, he will be sitting in a basement interrogation room beneath this house."
I looked at the three sleeping angels resting against my lap. Their chests rose and fell in perfect, synchronized rhythm.
"What are you going to do to him?" I asked quietly.
Roman turned around, his hazel eyes catching the pale starlight from the projector. "Whatever is required to get a signed confession, a full public exposure of the hospital board, and every single file he ever hid."
He walked slowly across the nursery floor, stopping a few feet away from me. For the first time, I noticed how young he looked beneath the intimidating reputation—and how deep his own grief had run before tonight.
"When they told me Victoria died giving birth," Roman said softly, his voice cracking slightly, "I thought my life was over. I raised these three children in a fortress because I was terrified someone would try to take the only pieces of her I had left. I never knew... I never knew the woman who gave them life was alive, struggling in a diner three miles away from my office."
"They lied to both of us," I whispered, reaching out hesitantly to touch the sleeve of his dark shirt. "We were both victims of a monster."
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Roman looked down at my hand, then slowly covered it with his own large, calloused palm. His skin was warm, steady, and anchor-like.
"We are going to fix this, Pamela," he promised, his voice carrying the absolute, unyielding weight of an oath. "And nobody will ever take them from us again."
