The Wife Everyone Buried
Chapter 02 - The Wife Everyone Buried
Detective Mara Sloan, head of security for the charity gala and a former military investigator, ordered the ballroom sealed. Hannah and the baby were moved to a private sitting room while paramedics examined them.
Hannah was exhausted but clear-minded. The cut on her forehead came from crawling through a broken service window at St. Agnes House, a private recovery center owned by a Hart subsidiary.
Adrian remained by the door, unable to reconcile the woman before him with the funeral he had attended.
“I wrote to you every week,” he said.
“I never received a single letter.”
“You sent one saying you wanted an annulment.”
“I never wrote that.”
Evelyn entered with Conrad and the family attorney, Simon Pike. Simon produced a file containing Hannah’s death certificate, a psychiatric evaluation, and a statement claiming she had used false identities before.
Hannah laughed bitterly. “The doctor who signed that report was paid by the Hart Foundation.”
Conrad called the accusation delusional. He suggested the baby might have been selected because of the birthmark.
Adrian demanded an immediate DNA test.
While a doctor collected samples, Mara examined the medal. Its edge contained a narrow seam. Hannah explained that the chapel’s retired chaplain, Father Bennett, had modified it before Adrian’s deployment.
“He said important promises should never exist in only one record.”
Using a jeweler’s tool, Mara opened the medal. Inside was a tightly folded strip of archival paper bearing a seal, two signatures, and part of a registration number.
It was a miniature copy of Adrian and Hannah’s marriage certificate.
Simon’s confident expression vanished.
The original certificate had supposedly never reached the county registry. Without it, the Cross family claimed the chapel ceremony was symbolic rather than legal. The copy proved someone had expected the official record to disappear.
Evelyn said she had never seen the paper.
Hannah looked directly at her. “You visited me at St. Agnes eight months ago. You wore that same perfume.”
Evelyn went pale but denied it.
The DNA result arrived shortly after midnight.
Adrian was Ella’s biological father.
He entered the sitting room alone. Hannah was asleep in a chair with the baby against her chest. When Ella opened her eyes, Adrian saw his own mother’s gray-green color reflected back at him.
He had lost Hannah once because he trusted documents over unanswered questions.
He would not make the same mistake with his daughter.
He lifted the medal from the table and told Mara to open a criminal investigation into St. Agnes House.
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Outside the door, Conrad was already making a call.
“Move the records before morning,” he whispered.
