The Recording

The detective didn’t speak for several seconds after pressing play.

The room filled with static first.

Then voices.

Hospital voices.

Metal clinking. Fabric rustling. Someone giving instructions.

My heart was already racing, but then—

A cry.

Sharp.

Loud.

Alive.

My entire body froze.

Another cry followed.

Two babies.

Two healthy newborn cries.

I stopped breathing.

“No…” I whispered.

The recording continued.

A nurse’s voice:

“Both Apgars are strong. They’re perfect.”

Perfect.

Perfect.

My hands began shaking so violently I had to grab the edge of the desk to stay upright.

For seven years I had believed my daughters were stillborn.

For seven years I had believed my body failed them.

For seven years I carried guilt like a stone in my chest.

But my babies had been alive.

Then another voice entered the recording.

A voice I knew.

My stomach dropped.

My mother-in-law.

Margaret.

Cold. Controlled. Familiar.

“Are you absolutely certain she was sedated?” Margaret asked.

A man responded quietly. “Yes. She won’t remember anything.”

My ears started ringing.

Another nurse hesitated. “But the father—”

Margaret cut her off.

“The father signed the paperwork. This is already arranged.”

I turned slowly toward my husband.

Colton’s face had gone completely white.

“What paperwork?” I whispered.

He shook his head violently. “I don’t know. I never— I never signed anything like that.”

The recording continued.

A different male voice—authoritative.

Doctor-level.

“Transfer them now. The adoptive parents are waiting.”

The world tilted.

Adoptive parents.

My babies weren’t dead.

They were taken.

I collapsed into the chair.

My chest felt like it was splitting open.

“Where are they?” I croaked.

The detective slid a photograph across the desk.

Two little girls stood in a schoolyard.

Seven years old.

Matching backpacks.

Matching smiles.

And Colton’s eyes.

My lungs forgot how to work.

“That’s them,” I whispered. “That’s my daughters.”

Colton grabbed the photo with trembling hands.

“How?” he demanded. “Who did this?”

The detective’s expression was grim.

“We believe your twins were illegally placed through a private adoption network connected to someone inside the hospital.”

My pulse roared in my ears.

“Who?” I asked.

He hesitated.

Then said the words that shattered everything:

“Your mother-in-law is listed as the primary financial sponsor of the adoption.”

The room went silent.

I felt something inside me break clean in half.

Margaret hadn’t just hated me.

She had stolen my children.

Colton stood so abruptly his chair slammed into the wall.

“That’s impossible,” he said, voice shaking with rage. “My mother wouldn’t—”

The detective placed another document on the table.

Bank transfers.

Signatures.

Margaret’s name.

Dates matching the night I gave birth.

Reality hit him.

I watched the moment his world collapsed.

“My God,” he whispered.

I looked back at the photo.

My daughters.

Alive.

Growing up without me.

Calling someone else “Mom.”

Seven years of birthdays I missed.

First steps.

First words.

First day of school.

Grief unlike anything I’d ever known tore through me.

But beneath it—

Something else.

Fury.

Cold.

Focused.

Unstoppable.

I wiped my tears slowly.

“Where are they now?” I asked.

The detective met my eyes.

“I can take you to them,” he said quietly. “But there’s something you need to know first.”

My heart pounded.

“What?”

He exhaled.

“They have no idea you exist.”