Chapter 3 - The Certificate With the Wrong Time
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Jonathan Pierce arrived twenty minutes later carrying a locked case.
He had represented the Bellini family for seventeen years.
Victor trusted him with documents he trusted no one else to touch.
Inside was Gabriel’s death certificate.
Victor laid it on the dining table.
NAME:
Gabriel Anthony Bellini.
DATE OF BIRTH:
March 14.
TIME:
2:08 a.m.
TIME OF DEATH:
2:26 a.m.
Victor stared at it.
Then Jonathan placed Rose’s birth record beside it.
Rose Bellini.
Time of birth:
2:12 a.m.
Four minutes younger.
Marina watched quietly.
Victor looked at Jonathan.
“Who filed Gabriel’s certificate?”
“Saint Matthew’s.”
“Who signed it?”
A physician named Dr. Samuel Kerr.
Victor remembered the name vaguely.
“What happened to him?”
Jonathan searched.
Then frowned.
“He left the hospital six weeks later.”
“Where did he go?”
“No idea.”
Marina’s eyes shifted.
Victor noticed.
“Know something?”
“No.”
Jonathan kept reading.
Then stopped.
“This is strange.”
Victor looked over.
Gabriel’s death certificate listed the attending nurse as Caroline Reeves.
Rose’s newborn record listed Margaret Shaw.
Two different nurses.
Possible.
But then Jonathan compared timestamps.
Gabriel was supposedly pronounced dead at 2:26.
At 2:31, another hospital record showed a newborn male being transferred from maternity to a private neonatal transport unit.
No name.
Only:
BABY M.
Male.
Born 2:08.
Victor felt the room tilt.
“Who was Baby M?”
Jonathan didn’t know.
Marina put down her glass.
“Old hospital records are messy.”
Victor stared at her.
“You sound nervous.”
“I’m bored.”
Jonathan requested archived transfer logs.
The hospital resisted at first because the record involved another patient.
Then Victor produced parental documents and demanded preservation of anything associated with Elena’s delivery.
An hour later, an administrator called.
They had located an old handwritten transport sheet.
Baby M had been transferred at 2:34 a.m.
Destination:
St. Agnes Private Pediatric Center.
Victor’s jaw tightened.
“That wasn’t on Gabriel’s file.”
“No,” Jonathan said.
“Who authorized it?”
There was a signature.
Only initials.
M.C.
Marina Celeste Bellini.
Victor slowly turned toward her.
Marina’s face went completely still.
She was not yet Victor’s fiancée nine months earlier.
But she had been at Saint Matthew’s.
In the middle of the night.
Signing a transport order for a newborn boy.
Victor stepped closer.
“What did you do?”
Marina’s confidence returned.
“You’re assuming Baby M was Gabriel.”
Victor pointed at the birth time.
“Same minute.”
“Coincidence.”
“Then prove it.”
She smiled.
“You can’t prove the opposite.”
Jonathan’s phone buzzed.
He read the message.
Then looked at Victor.
“St. Agnes still exists.”
Victor nodded.
Jonathan continued.
“And somebody has been paying for a private pediatric account there for nine months.”
Victor looked toward Marina.
“Whose name?”
Jonathan swallowed.
“Marina Castellano Holdings.”
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👉 Gabriel’s death certificate said he lived eighteen minutes—but Marina had been secretly paying for a baby’s medical care ever since the night he supposedly died.
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