“Fine,” Mark said, his voice laced with nothing but mild annoyance. “Just make sure the transfer doesn’t trigger a red flag with the IRS.”
He casually took a pen from a clipboard handed to him by a man in a dark suit standing just off-camera. Mark signed the private adoption surrender documents with a flourish, trading his own flesh and blood for a wire transfer and his mother’s toxic approval. He then stepped aside, allowing a private medical courier waiting in the shadows to take the incubator.
The video ended.
My phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering onto the floor. A wave of physical nausea crashed over me so violently I had to lean over the bed rails, dry-heaving into a plastic basin. My mind fractured into a thousand jagged pieces. My son didn’t die. He was stolen. And the man who had been holding my hand, crying onto my shoulder, sleeping in the chair beside my bed, was a human trafficker who had sold our child to the highest bidder.
I pulled my remaining son fiercely to my chest, my entire body trembling violently with a rage so ancient and terrifying it tasted like ash in my mouth. I wanted to tear the hospital down brick by brick. I wanted to rip Mark’s throat out.
But as the heavy wooden door of my room suddenly pushed open, I had to swallow the scream burning in my lungs. Mark walked back in, holding two steaming cups of coffee, that same sickeningly warm, tragic smile plastered across his face.
