CHAPTER 2 – The Child Everyone Buried Alive
"No."
The word escaped before the woman realized she'd spoken.
"No... that's impossible."
Her hands shook violently as she stared at the photograph.
The silver crescent moon pendant resting against her chest suddenly felt unbearably heavy.
Emily tugged gently on her mother's sleeve.
"Mom..."
No response.
The woman couldn't breathe.
Because twenty-three years earlier...
She had buried her son.
Or so everyone had told her.
Her name was Victoria Ashford.
Wife of one of Chicago's wealthiest real estate developers.
Mother of one beautiful little girl.
Respected.
Admired.
Successful.
But beneath every expensive smile...
She carried one wound that had never healed.
When she was only nineteen, Victoria gave birth to a baby boy.
She named him Ethan.
He lived exactly four days.
Or at least...
That was what the hospital told her.
She had never seen his body.
Her powerful father had arranged everything.
"You were too young," he had said.
"It was kinder this way."
She had screamed.
Begged.
Demanded to hold her baby one last time.
Instead, nurses sedated her.
When she woke...
The crib was empty.
The funeral had already happened.
No coffin was ever opened.
No grave was ever visited.
Her parents insisted it was better to forget.
Eventually...
She stopped asking.
Or rather...
She learned pretending to stop asking was the only way to survive.
Now...
Standing in a filthy alley decades later...
A homeless boy held the missing half of her life in his trembling hands.
Victoria crouched slowly.
"What is your name?"
The boy hesitated.
"They call me Noah."
"They?"
"The shelter."
"And before that?"
Silence.
"I don't know."
"Who raised you?"
Another silence.
Finally...
"Nobody stayed long."
His voice remained calm.
Too calm.
The kind of calm children only learn after surviving things no child should survive.
"I lived with different people."
"Sometimes foster homes."
"Sometimes strangers."
"Sometimes..."
He stopped.
Victoria's heart pounded.
"Sometimes men who made me beg."
Emily gasped.
Victoria covered her mouth.
"They hurt me if I didn't bring enough money."
The words came without tears.
Without anger.
Like he had repeated them too many times.
"One man burned my arm because I smiled at someone."
Slowly...
Noah rolled up his sleeve.
A scar stretched across his forearm.
Victoria felt physically sick.
Then she noticed something else.
Behind his left ear.
A tiny birthmark.
A perfect crescent moon.
She froze.
Her own father had kissed that birthmark hundreds of times when Noah—when Ethan—was a newborn.
Nobody outside the family knew it existed.
Nobody.
Victoria reached toward it.
Her fingers stopped inches away.
"What happened..."
"...to your necklace?"
Noah looked confused.
"What necklace?"
"The one in the picture."
He reached into his pocket.
A small cloth pouch.
Inside lay half of a broken silver moon pendant.
Victoria instinctively grabbed the necklace around her own neck.
Her hands trembled so violently she almost dropped it.
The two halves...
Fit perfectly.
Emily watched with wide eyes.
"Mom..."
Victoria could barely whisper.
"This..."
"...this belonged to my son."
Noah looked completely lost.
"I've had it as long as I can remember."
Before Victoria could say another word...
A black SUV stopped at the entrance of the alley.
Three men stepped out.
Dark suits.
Cold faces.
One of them pointed directly at Noah.
"There he is."
Noah's face turned white.
He stumbled backward.
"No..."
His voice cracked with genuine terror.
"They found me."
Victoria immediately stepped in front of him.
"Who are you?"
The tallest man smiled.
"Ma'am."
"That boy belongs to us."
Victoria's eyes turned icy.
"No."
The man reached inside his jacket.
Emily screamed.
But instead of pulling out a gun...
He held up a thick legal file.
Stamped with the seal of Ashford Family Trust.
Victoria looked at the name on the first page.
Then at the signature.
Her own late father's signature.
Beneath it, one horrifying sentence waited.
TRANSFER OF INFANT CUSTODY — CONFIDENTIAL.
Victoria's blood ran cold.
Her father hadn't buried her baby.
He had sold him.
And the people standing in front of her...
May you like
Had finally come back to collect what they believed was still theirs.
(To Be Continued...)
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