Chapter 4 - The Investigation Begins
Three days later, I was discharged and immediately wheeled down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Sitting beside Lily’s incubator, watching her tiny chest rise and fall beneath the tangle of wires and breathing tubes, a fierce, protective maternal instinct eclipsed all my grief. She was a tiny miracle, wrapped in pink blankets, fighting for a world that had tried to lock her out before she even arrived.
Ethan pulled up a stool beside me, resting a hand gently on my shoulder.
"The police detective called while you were sleeping," Ethan said quietly. "Detective Miller. He spoke to the neighbors who saw Kelsey running out to the car with your purse, and he has the security footage from the front porch camera."
I turned my head, my eyes narrowing. "And my mother?"
"She tried to claim it was a domestic accident in the kitchen," Ethan replied, a grim smile touching the corner of his mouth. "Protocol mishap. But Miller found something interesting when he searched public records and cross-referenced some financial disclosures. Your mother didn't just want the diamonds for fashion, Maddie. She’s drowning in massive gambling debts."
The revelation hit me like a physical blow. All those times I had paid her mortgage, all those emergency loans, and it had all been poured into a bottomless pit of addiction.
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"She used the necklace as collateral," I realized aloud. "She planned to fence Charles’s heirloom to pay off her loan sharks before they came after her house."
"Exactly," Ethan said. "And the necklace is missing from your safe. Kelsey fenced it through a pawn broker downtown the very next morning. But Detective Miller has a warrant out for the recovery, and the broker has already given up names."
