Chapter 88 The hollow cradle

Chapter 88 The hollow cradle
​The hospital ward had finally settled into a fragile, artificial peace. The nurses had ushered my mother, Maya, and the uncles out an hour ago, insisting that I needed rest after the ordeal of the birth. The Blackwoods had left shortly after, Eleanor promising to bring "proper clothes and supplies" by morning.
​Victor had refused to leave. He had dragged the small, stiff vinyl couch to the corner of my room, his frame cramped and uncomfortable, but his presence was the only thing keeping the shadows at bay.
​The room was dim, lit only by the soft, blue glow of the monitoring equipment. I drifted in and out of a shallow, drug-induced sleep, my body aching with a hollow exhaustion. Around 2:00 AM, a sudden, cold draft seemed to slice through the room. My eyes snapped open. The maternal instinct, sharp and jagged, pierced through my fatigue.
​I needed to see him. I needed to see Sage.
​I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my muscles screaming in protest. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I limped toward the clear plastic bassinet where he had been sleeping soundly only two hours ago. My heart began a slow, heavy thud against my ribs.
​I reached the edge of the crib.
​It was empty.
​The small, blue-and-white striped blanket was tangled in a corner, still warm, but the weight that should have been there the five pounds of life that carried my father's chin and Victor’s eyes was gone.
​"Victor," I whispered, my voice a dry rasp. "Victor, wake up."
​He didn't stir. I moved to the couch, my hand shaking as I gripped his shoulder. "Victor! Where is the baby? Where is Sage?"
​Victor surged upward, his eyes bloodshot and disoriented. He looked at the empty bassinet, then at me, then around the small room as if the baby might be hiding in the shadows of the curtains. "He’s... he’s in his bed, Elena. The nurse must have taken him for a check-up. Or the nursery..."
​"No," I gasped, the panic finally breaking through. "They said he stays with me. Victor, he’s gone!"
​Victor grabbed his cane, his face pale with a sudden, freezing terror. He threw open the heavy wooden door of the room, shouting for the night nurse. The hallway was a long, sterile tunnel of silence that was suddenly shattered by our desperation.
​"Where is my son?" Victor roared as a startled nurse emerged from the station. "Who took the baby from Room 412?"
​The confusion was instantaneous. Nurses checked charts, paged the nursery, and searched the supply closets. No one knew. No one had seen a thing. The head doctor was called, his face etched with a professional horror that offered no comfort.
​Just as the hospital was descending into a full-scale lockdown, a young receptionist from the ground floor came running up the stairs, her face ashen.
​"I saw them," she stammered, looking at Victor’s murderous expression. "About twenty minutes ago. A doctor... or someone dressed like one. He was pushing an old woman in a wheelchair toward the side exit. I didn't think anything of it, but the woman... she was clutching a large, black medical bag against her chest like it was made of gold. They moved so fast. They were out the door and into a car before I could even ask for papers."
​The world tilted. My vision began to blur, a grey fog creeping in from the edges. I collapsed into a chair, my breath coming in short, agonizing bursts.
​"The cameras," Victor growled, his voice a low, vibrating snarl. "Show me the cameras. Now!"
​We were led to the security office, a small room crowded with flickering monitors. The head of security rewound the footage. At 1:42 AM, a tall man in a white lab coat and a surgical mask appeared in the frame, pushing a wheelchair. An older woman, her head wrapped in a thick scarf, sat in the chair, a bulky bag on her lap.
​They moved with a terrifying, calculated precision. They knew exactly where the blind spots were. As they reached the side exit, the man paused for a split second. He didn't look up, but the way he moved the cold, military efficiency of his stride sent a jolt of recognition through my heart.
​Their faces remained obscured by the shadows and the masks. Within seconds, they vanished into the darkness of the parking lot.
​"They took him," I wailed, the sound tearing from my throat like a physical wound. "They took my baby!"
​Victor was already on the phone, his hand trembling so hard the device nearly slipped from his grip. By the time the police arrived to take our statements, the hospital was a sea of blue and red flashing lights.
​My mother and Maya arrived shortly after, having been jolted awake by our frantic calls. They burst into the waiting room, my mother’s cries echoing my own. Eleanor and Marcus appeared soon after, their faces masks of exquisite, practiced grief. Eleanor rushed to my side, pulling me into a cold, silk-scented embrace, her tears flowing freely as she whispered platitudes about "finding him" and "bringing him home."
​But as she held me, I looked at her through the haze of my tears.
​The police officer stood over us, his notebook open. "Mr. Blackwood, we need a list of anyone who might have a grudge. Any disgruntled employees? Any family disputes?"
​Victor didn't answer. He was staring at his phone, his thumb hovering over Vane’s name. "He’s not picking up," Victor whispered, more to himself than the officer. "Vane would have seen this. Vane would have stopped them. Why isn't he picking up his phone?"
​He dialed again. One ring. Two. Voicemail.
​"He’s been gone for three hours," Victor said, his voice cracking with a new, sharper kind of stress. "He said he was going to the penthouse to check the servers. He never made it back. He hasn't replied to my text about the baby. This... this isn't Vane."
​I sat on the bench, my body feeling like it was made of lead. Maya held my hand, her own tears splashing onto our joined knuckles.
​"First Dad," I whispered, the realization hitting me with the force of a tidal wave. "Then Vane disappears. Now the baby."
​I looked up at the ceiling, at the harsh neon lights that seemed to mock our misery. The puzzle was no longer a mystery; it was a massacre. Someone was systematically stripping away everything I loved, one piece at a time.
​Victor paced the length of the hallway, his face a mask of sweating agony. He looked at his parents, then at the police, then back at his phone. He was a man with all the money in the world, and he was completely, utterly powerless.
​"He has to be okay," Victor muttered, his eyes fixed on the blank screen of his phone. "Vane has to be okay."
​But as the wind rattled the hospital windows and the first grey light of a miserable dawn began to break over the city, I knew the truth. Vane wasn't coming back. And Sage was out there in the dark, in the hands of the very people who had made my father a ghost.
​I closed my eyes, the image of the empty bassinet burned into my mind. The silence of the hospital ward was the loudest thing I had ever heard. It was the sound of a family being erased, one heartbeat at a time.