Chapter 4 - THE OTHER AUDREY
The woman from the bell tower was named Laura Reed.
She had been admitted to the same maternity hospital as Audrey three days earlier.
Same age.
Same blood type.
Emergency C-section.
Her newborn daughter disappeared after delivery.
Hospital staff told Laura the baby died.
No body was shown.
Her wrist carried Audrey’s identification bracelet.
The implication was immediate.
Cross had switched patient identities.
Why?
At the hospital, Maya’s DNA was tested again.
She was not genetically related to Audrey.
The cathedral records were another layer of misdirection.
The baby Audrey carried for nine months had been switched after birth.
Maya—the baby in her arms—belonged biologically to Laura.
Audrey’s biological daughter was missing.
Audrey sat beside Maya’s incubator and felt love split from biology.
Maya had breathed against her chest.
Cried in her arms.
Nearly died inside the poisoned blanket.
Whatever the records said, she was not “the wrong baby.”
But Audrey’s own newborn was somewhere else.
Claire reconstructed the hospital timeline.
Both women delivered within one hour.
Cross supervised both emergency procedures.
Samantha entered the nursery using a family donor badge.
Garrett arrived after midnight.
Security footage showed him leaving with a covered infant carrier.
He returned twenty minutes later without it.
Garrett claimed he moved medical supplies.
The video showed a baby’s hand through the blanket.
He had taken Audrey’s daughter.
Where?
Northfield.
The same facility named in Henry’s recording.
Police raided the address.
The building was empty.
Warm bottles remained in the nursery.
A crib had been used recently.
On the wall, Cross had written:
ONE HEIR. ONE SPARE.
The trust scheme was more complicated than anyone understood.
Henry’s preserved sample had been used to create an embryo years earlier.
That embryo was not implanted into Audrey.
It was implanted into Laura.
Maya was Henry Bennett’s biological daughter.
Laura was the gestational carrier.
Audrey’s embryo used her egg and Garrett’s sperm.
Her missing daughter was Garrett’s biological child.
Cross switched the babies to manipulate succession.
Maya, as Henry’s daughter, controlled the Bennett trust.
Audrey’s daughter, as Garrett’s child, gave Garrett leverage over Audrey.
If Audrey accepted Maya publicly, Garrett could later expose the switch and accuse her of kidnapping.
If she rejected Maya, he could claim Audrey was unstable and unfit.
Every path became a trap.
Then Laura woke fully.
She asked for Maya.
Audrey brought the baby only after doctors approved.
Laura touched the incubator.
“Is she mine?”
Audrey answered:
“She is your biological daughter.”
Laura looked at Audrey.
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
Laura closed her eyes.
“So do I.”
Two mothers.
One baby.
No simple ownership.
They agreed nothing would be decided quickly.
First, they would find Audrey’s child.
Then Claire found a hidden audio file inside the poisoned blanket’s stitching.
Cross’s voice:
“Audrey’s baby is alive. Garrett knows where. Ask him about the gold key.”
Garrett’s father had worn a gold key around his neck inside the casket.
During the cathedral chaos, it disappeared.
Security footage showed Eleanor taking it.
Garrett’s mother had the key.
And she had left the cathedral before police locked the perimeter.
Laura’s testimony complicated the maternity timeline further.
She remembered hearing another woman crying behind a curtain after surgery.
The woman kept repeating:
“They told my husband it was a boy.”
Hospital logs listed no third patient.
Claire searched disposal records and discovered a third bassinet tag inside a locked waste container.
BABY C — FEMALE.
No mother listed.
The tag carried the Bennett Medical Systems research code.
Cross had planned three newborn movements that night.
One child became Maya.
One became Hope.
The third disappeared before anyone knew to look.
Northfield’s old nursery contained three warming stations.
Only two had been used recently.
The third held a dried blood spot suitable for DNA.
The sample matched Samantha.
Samantha had given birth years earlier.
She told the family the pregnancy ended in miscarriage.
In truth, Cross removed the child after delivery.
A daughter.
Now eight years old.
The same age as Theo.
Samantha knew the child lived but not where.
That explained her obsession with interim trust control.
She believed wealth would help her retrieve the girl later.
Instead of exposing the network, she joined it, hoping power would eventually return what obedience had cost her.
Audrey asked Samantha during interview:
“Did helping them bring your daughter back?”
“No.”
“Then why keep helping?”
“Because every crime made confession harder.”
That was the architecture of the family.
Not loyalty.
Accumulated fear.
Claire’s team searched Bennett boarding schools and private foster programs.
They found a girl named Rose living under a trust-funded scholarship.
DNA confirmed she was Samantha’s daughter.
Rose had no idea.
The court sealed the result until an independent advocate could prepare her.
No dramatic reunion.
No officer bringing a child into an interrogation room.
Truth would arrive at the speed safest for Rose, not the speed most satisfying to adults.
Samantha cried when told the girl was alive.
Then asked whether she could see a photograph.
May you like
The advocate refused until Rose consented.
For the first time, Samantha experienced a boundary money could not move.
