Chapter 4 - The Empty Folder
Andrea kept Leo’s original birth records inside a fireproof safe in her home office.
The file contained hospital bracelets, delivery records, DNA screening results and a letter Andrea had written to Leo on the night he was born.
Two days after confronting Marco, she opened the safe.
The folder was there.
One document was not.
The certified delivery summary identifying Andrea as Leo’s birth mother had disappeared.
Andrea searched every drawer.
She checked the scanner history, the office shelves and the locked cabinet beneath her desk.
Nothing.
Marco claimed he knew nothing about it.
“Maybe you moved it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You’ve been distracted.”
Andrea looked at him.
“By what?”
“The trust. The party. Your father’s anniversary.”
Her father had died three years earlier that month.
Marco often used grief to explain any emotion he found inconvenient.
Andrea called Rebecca Cole.
The attorney listened carefully.
“Who knows the safe code?”
“Only Marco and me.”
“Change it immediately.”
Andrea hesitated.
“He’s my husband.”
“He’s also the man asking for control of an eighty-million-dollar trust.”
Rebecca requested digital copies of every remaining record.
Then she said something Andrea did not want to hear.
“If someone intends to challenge your legal relationship to Leo, the missing delivery record would be useful.”
“My relationship to my own son?”
“I’m not saying the challenge would succeed. I’m saying we should prepare.”
Andrea arranged an independent certified copy from the hospital.
The hospital administrator called her the following morning.
“There’s a restriction on the file.”
“Placed by whom?”
“A legal representative for your family.”
Andrea had authorized no representative.
The restriction claimed the maternity record was under dispute.
Attached to it was a request from an attorney named Samuel Pike.
Andrea had never heard of him.
Rebecca recognized the name immediately.
He specialized in high-conflict custody cases.
His clients often sought emergency orders before the other parent knew a case existed.
That afternoon, Andrea discovered Marco had transferred twenty-five thousand dollars from their household account to Pike’s firm.
When she confronted him, he did not apologize.
“It was a consultation.”
“About taking Leo from me?”
“About protecting my rights.”
“From his mother?”
Marco’s eyes became cold.
May you like
“That depends on who the court recognizes as his mother.”
👉 Marco had secretly hired a custody attorney, and Andrea’s next discovery revealed that Valerie was preparing to claim she had given birth to Leo.
