“Have you ever had a child?” he asked.
Hannah swallowed. “Yes. Two years ago.”
“What happened?”
“They told me she died,” Hannah whispered. “In Bern.”
The room seemed colder.
Victor looked at Sophie. Then Hannah. Then back again.
Certainty replaced anger.
“You’re coming with us,” he said.
Hannah’s breath caught. “Where?”
“To find out why the child you buried is sitting at my table.”
The truth unfolded over the next two days.
A private clinic. Altered documents. Changed names. A quiet transaction fueled by power and desperation.
Victor had wanted a child.
Hannah had lost hers.
And somewhere between those truths, a baby had been taken—not to be harmed, but claimed.
Sophie hadn’t been silent.
She had been waiting.
Waiting for the voice her body remembered. The scent that meant safety. The presence her heart recognized long before her mind could understand.
DNA confirmed it.
Hannah collapsed when she heard.
Victor stayed silent for a long time.
“They took her from both of us,” he said finally.
He didn’t ask for forgiveness.
He gave her a choice.
The months that followed were not easy. Healing never is.