Bella's legs were rubber by the time they cornered her again.
She'd made it three blocks past the shuttered bakery when a van throttled slow along the curb, matching her pace. Two men fanned from its shadow; a third blocked the sidewalk with a smile that never reached his eyes.
"No," she breathed, clutching Jessy tighter. His small chest rose in frightened hitches. "No, please..."
"Easy," one murmured, palms up like a lie. "Come on, sweetheart. Don't make this..."
She ran.
They were faster.
A hand knotted in her hood, yanking her back. Another grabbed the sling across her chest; she twisted, snarled, bit, and someone cursed, hot blood on her tongue. The third man's arm locked around her waist and lifted; her feet kicked, scraping asphalt. Jessy wailed, high and thin.
"Don't touch him!" Bella cried, feral with terror. "I'll go, I'll go, just....don't..."
A rag found her face..,chemical, sweet, the same drowning sleep reaching up from the dark. "Mama's here," she gasped to Jessy, fighting for one more breath, one more look, until the street smeared and slid away.
They hauled her into the van. The door slammed. The city swallowed the sound.
She woke to bare concrete and humming lights. Her wrists were bound with soft restraints that burned every time she moved. Someone had tried to be kind there was a blanket, a bottle of water on a crate, a portable heater humming tired warmth into the corner but it was a jail by any name.
Jessy wasn't on her chest.
The scream tore free before she could stop it. "Where is my baby?"
A door clanged. The leader from the alley lean, polite eyes that said he did impolite work stepped inside with a tablet in hand.
"Relax, Ms. Walter. He's in the next room." He tilted the screen; a camera feed showed Jessy in a bassinet, small fists flexing. "He's fine."
"Give him to me," Bella said, voice raw.
"In a moment," the man said mildly. "We have to collect a sterile swab. That's all."
Her blood iced. "A what?"
"Cheek swab. Protocol."
"For what?" Her breath came short. The feed showed a gloved hand reach toward Jessy with a cotton tip. "For what?"
The man's polite smile didn't change. "To prevent confusion."
Her stomach dropped to a bottomless place. The old woman's last words, Vera's panic, a thousand frightened hunches crashing into one bright, awful line.
"Whose orders?" she whispered.
"Don't trouble yourself." He pocketed the tablet. "You're valuable to the wrong people alive. But compliance keeps babies comfortable. Do we understand each other?"
She didn't trust her voice. She nodded once. The man left, locking the door behind him. Bella pressed her forehead to the cool concrete wall and begged God for the first miracle that came to mind: let him be safe. Let him be safe. Let him be safe.
Through the wall, as if in answer, Jessy's thin cry ghosted back.
At the port, the cold rolled off the black water and lifted, rank with diesel. Elliot's unmarked van idled two blocks out while his soft team fanned to positions they'd decided with three words and a glance. Chris stood in the lee of a chain-link fence and watched the warehouse: red bay door, no sign, two exterior cameras he could see and a third he could feel.
"Thermals?" he asked.
Elliot checked his tablet. "Six heat signatures. Two on the move. One cluster with smaller-second profile could be a kid. One stationary maybe our girl. One in an office."
"Clinton?"
"If he's smart, he's in the office."
Chris rolled his shoulder until it clicked. "He's smart."
Elliot's eyes cut sideways. "Clinton used to work for your old man."
"He worked for both of them," Chris said. The words tasted like metal. "Not anymore."
He tapped his earpiece. "All units on my mark."
"Chris," Elliot said quietly. "Once we have her, this doesn't end. You know that."
"I'm counting on it," Chris said, already walking.
Inside, Clinton felt the prickle that meant a line had been crossed somewhere in the dark and turned to the monitor bank. The feed on the service entrance fuzzed, cleared, and fuzzed again the way skilled hands made it look like weather.
He reached for his phone. It vibrated before he could touch it.
"Ma'am," he said. "We have movement."
Cassandra's voice was cool glass on the other end. "Contain it. If you can't, destroy the samples and evacuate. No stains."
"Yes, ma'am."
He hung up and froze as every monitor cut to black in a ripple, like a tide.
The door behind him whispered. He turned just in time to see the barrel of a suppressed Glock and the man attached to it.
"Hello, Clinton," Chris said softly.
Clinton smiled despite the gun. "Young master."
"That title is retired," Chris said. "You work for my mother now."
Clinton didn't flinch. "I work for the best offer."
"You picked the worst one," Chris said, and in the same calm voice: "Where is Bella?"
Clinton's eyes flicked once toward the hallway. It was enough.
"Thanks," Chris said, ghosted forward, and broke the man's wrist on the gun reach without changing his expression. Clinton went to a knee with a hiss; the Glock clattered. Chris kicked it away and cuffed him to the desk with a zip tie that bit to the bone.
"If she coded that order," he said, stepping close enough that Clinton could see the muscle ticking in his jaw, "you know what that means for her."
Clinton, who had watched men bluff and men bleed, believed him. "Down the hall. Left. Second door. The kid is in the med room. Two guards. One nurse."
"Good man," Chris said, and moved.
"Chris," Clinton called after him, because suicide could be moral if you squinted. "If you're going to burn it all down...start with the one who lit the match."
Chris didn't answer. He was already a shadow.
The first guard never saw the door open. The second got a whisper of motion and then sleep. The nurse froze with a swab held inches from Jessy's cheek and lifted her hands until they trembled.
"Put it down," Chris said quietly. His eyes flicked once to the bassinet.
Violet. The smallest, clearest violet. Like a memory. Like a wound.
He dragged his gaze back by force. "Open the door next room."
Bella turned from the wall when it swung in. She blinked hard at the figure in the threshold as if her mind had conjured him from pain and prayer. His mouth parted something broke across his face and then caged itself again.
"Chris," she said, and the name tore out of her like breath.
He crossed the room in three long strides and pulled her into him, the restraint biting his own forearms as he hauled her close.
"I'm here," he said into her hair. For a moment, both of them shook the same way. Then he pushed back just enough to find the buckle and tear it loose.
"We have to move. Can you walk?"
"Yes," she lied, already stumbling into him.
"Elliot," Chris said into the mic, "we have them. Exfil east corridor. Car two."
"Copy," Elliot said. "And Chris...Clinton sang. It's worse than we thought."
Chris didn't look back. "I know."
He guided Bella into the med room. Jessy's cry flared at the sound of her voice; she gathered him so fast the air became an afterthought. Chris's hand covered the back of the baby's head for one raw, reverent second then he was the strategist again, sweeping the hall with the muzzle, counting doors, listing points of possible failure the way other men did shopping lists.
They reached the service exit as three shadows cut the opposite corner. Elliot's team stepped into them and (thup-thup-thup) turned threat into floor with clinical mercy.
Cold hit like a wall outside. The van door slid. Bella climbed in with Jessy in a clutch that no one on earth could pry loose. Chris boosted her up, followed, and banged the wall twice.
"Go."
The van leapt.
Only then, in that small square of moving safety, did he let himself look. Really look. Bella's face was pale and raw; Jessy's tiny mouth worked against her shoulder, seeking what fear had stolen. The baby turned once those eyes catching the cabin's low light and Chris's breath stuttered, almost invisibly.
Elliot watched him from the front seat's mirror and said nothing.
Bella, shaking, whispered, "They were going to take his DNA."
"I know," Chris said.
"Why?"
His gaze went past her, through the van wall, across decades of loyalty ash-white with betrayal. "Because someone you should never have needed to fear is terrified of the truth."
She stared, not understanding and understanding enough to go colder. "Who?"
He shook his head, a promise in the gesture. "Not here."
He squeezed her hand once, then reached forward and tapped Elliot's shoulder. "Two calls," he said. "Secure line to Joanna's. And then connect me to Cassandra."
Elliot glanced back. "You sure?"
Chris's eyes were winter. "I'm done being sure. Now I'm certain."
The van took the turn that would carry them toward the faint edge of dawn, toward a house full of anger and love and the next hard conversation. Somewhere back at the port, a phone began to ring in a gilded house, and a woman with violet eyes and a glass heart reached for it with a hand that had never trembled until now.