PART 9 — THE WOMAN WHO NEVER EXISTED
No one spoke.
Four phones.
One message.
The same unknown sender.
Tomorrow. Noon. Grand Central Station. Come alone if you want the truth about Adrian's real mother.
Detective Sarah Mitchell was the first to move.
"No one goes alone."
My father shook his head.
"That's exactly what Richard wants us to say."
Melissa looked between us.
"Do you think the message is real?"
"No," Mitchell answered.
"I think the bait is real."
I barely slept that night.
Every time I closed my eyes...
I saw Adrian.
His smile.
His confusion when his father was arrested.
His promise that he had never known the truth.
Had that been another lie?
Or was he another victim?
At 8:00 a.m., Mitchell gathered our team inside police headquarters.
A map of Grand Central Station covered the conference room wall.
She pointed to dozens of red markers.
"Snipers."
"Plainclothes officers."
"Transit police."
"Surveillance teams."
"No matter what the message says..."
"...Elena will not be alone."
My father remained strangely quiet.
Finally he spoke.
"Richard won't appear."
Mitchell looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because Richard never enters a room he can't control."
"He'll send someone else."
11:45 a.m.
Grand Central Station overflowed with commuters.
Tourists.
Business travelers.
Children dragging suitcases.
Thousands of strangers.
The perfect place to disappear.
I walked into the Main Concourse alone.
At least...
That was how it looked.
Hidden among the crowd were more than forty officers.
Watching.
Waiting.
Exactly at noon...
Every clock inside the station chimed.
Nothing happened.
One minute.
Two.
Five.
Then...
A little girl approached me.
She couldn't have been older than eight.
She held a white envelope.
"Miss Elena?"
I knelt beside her.
"Yes?"
"A nice man asked me to give you this."
"Where is he?"
She pointed toward the balcony.
But when I looked...
No one was there.
Mitchell quietly intercepted the child.
The girl described the man.
Gray coat.
Black gloves.
Baseball cap.
Average height.
Nothing memorable.
Exactly the way Richard liked it.
Inside the envelope...
There was only one photograph.
A young woman.
Dark hair.
Kind eyes.
Holding a newborn baby.
On the back...
Six handwritten words.
She never stopped looking for him.
My heart pounded.
"Who is she?"
My father took one look.
The blood drained from his face.
"No..."
Mitchell stared at him.
"You know her."
He whispered her name.
"Victoria."
"Who's Victoria?" I asked.
He looked as though he'd seen a ghost.
"She worked with Richard and me."
"What did she do?"
"Accounting."
Melissa frowned.
"Why would she matter?"
My father answered with visible effort.
"Because..."
"...she disappeared."
"When?"
"Twenty-four years ago."
"Police believed she stole company money."
Mitchell narrowed her eyes.
"And you believed that?"
He shook his head.
"No."
"I believed Richard framed her."
Mitchell immediately called for a database search.
Five minutes later...
An officer returned.
"That's impossible."
"What?"
"There is no Victoria."
"What do you mean?"
"No birth certificate."
"No driver's license."
"No death certificate."
"No immigration record."
"No tax history."
"It is as if..."
"...she never legally existed."
The room inside the temporary command center became silent.
Mitchell looked at the photograph again.
"Someone erased her."
My phone buzzed.
Another message.
Wrong woman.
Before I could react...
Another photograph arrived.
This one showed Victoria standing beside...
Celeste.
Both women looked pregnant.
Taken the same month.
Same year.
Both smiling.
As if they were friends.
Melissa whispered,
"That's impossible."
"Celeste always claimed she had never met this woman."
Then another message appeared.
Only one of those babies went home with the right mother.
I felt my knees weaken.
Mitchell caught my arm.
"No..."
she whispered.
"No, Richard..."
My father stared at the phone.
His voice cracked.
"My God..."
"What?" I asked.
He looked at me with horror.
"If Richard switched the babies..."
"No."
I refused to believe it.
"No."
Mitchell interrupted sharply.
"We don't know that's what happened."
"But if it did..."
She never finished.
None of us wanted to.
Suddenly every officer's radio exploded with voices.
"We lost Camera Twelve."
"Camera Fifteen offline."
"West entrance blackout."
"South corridor too."
Mitchell's expression changed instantly.
"This wasn't about the photographs."
"It's a diversion."
At that exact second...
The massive information board above the Main Concourse flickered.
Train schedules disappeared.
The entire screen turned black.
Thousands of travelers looked up.
Then white letters slowly appeared.
HELLO, ELENA.
Gasps echoed through the station.
The message changed.
YOU BROUGHT THE POLICE.
Mitchell grabbed her radio.
"Find the control room!"
But before anyone moved...
Another line appeared.
I EXPECTED THAT.
Then...
Every screen inside the station switched to live security footage.
Not of me.
Not of the police.
Of Adrian.
He was tied to a chair inside an unfamiliar room.
Bruised.
Bleeding from his forehead.
His eyes opened as the camera zoomed in.
"Elena..."
he whispered.
"If you can hear me..."
"They lied to both of us..."
The screen suddenly went black.
One final message appeared.
CHECK THE HOSPITAL RECORDS. BABY BOY. JUNE 18. TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO. ROOM 314.
Then every monitor returned to normal.
As if nothing had happened.
The station erupted into panic.
People screamed.
Officers rushed in every direction.
Mitchell looked at me.
"Richard just gave us our first real lead."
My father wasn't looking at the screens.
He was staring at the old photograph of Victoria.
May you like
His lips trembled as he whispered something almost too quietly to hear.
"I buried the wrong woman..."
