chapter 70

chapter 70
Kylie had rehearsed the walk a dozen times in her head; the route from the back entrance of St. Mary’s to the anonymous café three streets over felt like a line she was walking between two worlds. One world was warm with the terrible loyalty she’d been raised in — the one where her sister’s whim was a law and silence a currency. The other was cold with truth and consequence, and it had begun to feel, to her own astonishment, like the only place she could stand.

She had found the folder two nights ago, tucked under the false bottom of a desk drawer in Samantha’s apartment, a place she’d been told to clean and ignore the contents. Samantha had coached her to look like a dutiful sibling; she’d taught her tone, practiced the correct expressions when people asked if she was okay. But curiosity is a small, efficient thief. It had taken one quick look at the documents to see the architecture of something rotten: forged signatures, wire transfers routed through shell companies, receipts that led back to Luca Giancarlo. And then the thing that made her skin slide off like wet paint — the hospital paternity report, stamped with a unit number and engraved with a lab header. Thomas’s name, clear and clinical.

Kylie had read, then re-read it until the print was a smear on her eyes. She had stayed up until three in the morning, staring at the ceiling, her finger trailing the edge of the paper like an apology. The choice had begun to make itself.

She stepped into the café wet from rain, hood glued low, and saw them immediately. Delia sat in the corner booth exactly where Frank had described — hands wrapped around a mug, not drinking. Frank watched the door like a man who’d heard a shot and was waiting for the echo. Thomas looked older than the pictures she’d seen; he looked like a man carrying a collapsing building on his shoulders.

Kylie paused at the threshold, the folder heavy behind her jacket. Her hands felt foolish and clumsy, as if she’d misplaced the courage required to slide into the booth and offer it up. When Delia looked up, Kylie saw a woman who had done more than survive: she had learned how to stand. There was fear there, but not the kind she knew to be useful. There was a calculation, and that steadied Kylie’s hands.

“Delia,” she said, voice thin. The name tasted different on her tongue now that she wasn’t practicing it for Samantha’s satisfaction. She slid into the seat, fingers knocking the corner of the folder against the wood.

Delia’s gaze flicked to Frank and then back to Kylie. “You shouldn’t be here, Kylie,” she said quietly.

“I know,” Kylie replied. Her pulse thrummed like a trapped thing. “That’s the point.”

Frank’s eyes sharpened, not unfriendly, not cruel — assessing. “You’re taking a risk.”

Kylie laughed, the sound brittle. “Risk is how I breathe now.” She pushed the folder forward. “I found these.” Her hands hid behind the barrier of paper and print. “I couldn’t— I couldn’t keep pretending. Sam… she’s been lying to everyone. She’s been moving money. She’s been using the baby to control him.”

Thomas’s head snapped up like a man hearing thunder. “You have proof?” His voice was half hope, half the exhaustion of a man who’d been awake too long.

Kylie’s fingers trembled as she eased the sealed envelope across the table. “The paternity results,” she said. “Stamped, dated, logged. I… I don’t know why they were hidden, but I found them. He’s your son, Thomas. The baby in NICU — he’s yours.”

The room condensed around the words. Delia’s face washed through a thousand expressions: shock, a raw, porous ache, then something like cold relief — the kind that comes when a question you’ve been laying on your bones finally has an answer. It made her more vulnerable and, perversely, stronger.

“We have to move fast,” Frank said, already slipping into the shape of the planner. “If Samantha realises her sister’s turned, she’ll move to silence you. We need the papers, all of them. Transfer copies, ledgers, anything that proves Samantha’s collusion with Luca. And we need to know where the baby is now.”

Kylie swallowed, the small bulky folder suddenly inadequate for everything she’d pulled from the dark. “He’s on the third floor, NICU bay C. Samantha checked in as ‘unknown’ and then demanded privacy. She’s been there every few hours, visiting and leaving angry calls. The nurses… some think she’s a patient’s relative. She bribed one of the porters for extra access.”

Delia’s breath hitched at the image of her — of anyone — bribing a porter for access to the small life that birthed her rage. She forced herself to steady. “We get the hospital on record. We get legal ready. Kylie, do you trust us not to burn you when this is over?”

Kylie’s laugh was a raw thing. “I don’t trust anyone. But I trust that if I don’t do this he dies in politics.” She looked at Thomas, seeing the man he might become. “He deserves a chance. He deserves better than being a bargaining chip.”

“Can you get us everything?” Frank asked. “Not just the paternity, but the transactional trail — the accounts, the receipts, who’s been paid.”

Kylie nodded once. “I can, but not from here. She keeps her laptop in the bedroom. I saw a pattern — she uses the same VPN at certain times and a burner server when she wants to destroy things. If I go into her place and copy everything, I don’t know if she’ll notice. We need a plan.”

Frank folded his fingers, thinking like someone designing a chessboard. “We’ll do it surgically. Jespar will provide a local contact to run surveillance for two nights. You go in under the guise of taking her shopping — something Sam does to control exposure. You’ll wear a tracker and have a direct line to us. Two men will be outside on coms and two on the roof. If she’s suspicious, we pull you out. If she sleeps, we get the files.”

Kylie’s hands tightened around the rim of the coffee cup like someone holding a life raft. “And if she catches me?”

Frank’s eyes were flat, unblinking. “Then you run. We’ll get you out. But we don’t leave her power intact. Not anymore.”

For a long moment Kylie rested in the decision she’d made. Loyalty had been a currency in the wrong economy for too long. Betrayal, she realised, could be a form of mercy.

She slid a second, smaller photograph from inside the folder across the table. It was not a document but a glimpse: Samantha, hair crazed, smiling at a phone — pride and cruelty braided — holding the NICU tag. Kylie’s hand hovered over it. “You need to know she won’t go quietly. She thinks she deserves everything. She thinks she’s owed Thomas.”

“Then we make sure she’s not owed anything,” Delia said, quieter than before. There was the steel edge now, an unspoken contract.

Kylie stood, the chair scraping softly against the floor. “What if I don’t survive this?” she whispered, the honesty of the question making Delia’s chest ache.

“You will,” Frank said without hesitation. “And if you don’t, we will make sure your name holds like an anchor. We won’t let your courage be wasted.”

Kylie nodded, swallowed, then turned to Thomas. “If I get you this baby, will you be there?” For the first time she demanded proof that betrayal wouldn’t be for another hollow cause.

Thomas’s voice shook, but his answer was sure. “Every day. I will do the work. I will be the father he deserves.” His eyes, raw and repentant, held hers like a vow.

Kylie allowed herself the small, private hope that the man she’d watched from a distance might actually become what he promised. Then she stepped back into the rain, the folder pressed to her chest like a heart.

They arranged the logistics across small, staggered meetings — who would watch the cameras, who would take the roof, what the safe exit would be should Samantha notice. Kylie would make one visit to Samantha the next day, a casual shopping trip in a low-key car. Jespar’s surveillance man would be in place by dawn.

When Kylie left, Delia sat with the weight of what had just happened. Betrayal from within had a particular taste: bitter and salted with relief. If Samantha’s sister had truly turned, the scales would tip. But nothing was certain until the net snapped around them.

The café hummed with low conversation; the rain eased to a steady drizzle. Outside, the city moved on because it always did — people buying bread, a child arguing with a father — small ongoing insistences of normal life.

Delia pressed her palms to the table and felt the grain of the wood beneath her fingers. “Then we pull the camera,” she said. “We expose her. We take her down.”

Frank’s response was all business, all the calm of a man who expected storms and prepared for them. “We set the trap. We let Samantha step into it. She will blow herself wide open when she thinks she has everything.”

Thomas closed his hands around the small hot cup in front of him like someone clinging to a life preserver. “I deserve none of it,” he said. “But I’ll take whatever chance to fix what I broke.”

Delia watched him, seeing the man not as a hopeless relic but as a person who might still choose differently. “Do it,” she said. “Begin.”

Outside, Kylie walked into the city like someone who’d just decided to be brave. Inside the café, the three of them packed the folder into Frank’s jacket and moved — the next phase beginning like a drumroll under the skin.

They had an ally. They had names. They had a baby in a hospital and a sister who’d finally seen the light. It was not victory, not yet. It was, at last, a beginning.