Chapter 6 - The Ransom
Sofia collapsed onto the damp pavement, sobbing uncontrollably for her stolen child.
Lorenzo knelt beside his broken daughter, wrapping his arms around her while burning with uncontrollable rage.
Agent Claire immediately pulled out her encrypted phone, trying to track Julian's cellular signal.
She cursed under her breath, announcing that Julian had completely turned off all his electronic devices.
Lorenzo gently lifted the two remaining babies, swearing a blood oath that he would bring their sibling home.
They moved to a cheap, unlisted motel room nearby to hide and formulate a desperate rescue plan.
For three agonizing hours, the silent motel room felt like a cold, suffocating tomb.
Suddenly, Lorenzo's burner phone lit up with an unknown, heavily encrypted video call.
He answered it, projecting the video onto the cracked television screen for Claire and Sofia to see.
Julian appeared on the screen, looking terrified, bruised, and covered in someone else's blood.
Julian confessed that he had tried to run away with the baby to use as leverage against his own ruthless father.
But the Volkov cartel had intercepted him on the highway and taken both him and the newborn hostage.
The camera panned over, revealing the missing baby sleeping peacefully in a high-tech glass incubator.
Standing next to the incubator was Bianca, Julian's mother, looking remarkably calm and impeccably dressed.
Bianca smiled at the camera, stating that she had always despised her husband's violent, careless methods.
She revealed that she had secretly aligned herself with the Volkov syndicate to stage a massive coup against her own family.
Bianca looked directly at Lorenzo, offering him a very dangerous, unexpected compromise.
She promised to return the stolen baby completely unharmed if Lorenzo brought the other two babies to the shipping yards.
She wanted the cartel to have all three triplets, claiming they possessed a rare genetic trait the syndicate desperately needed.
Sofia screamed at the television, vowing she would never hand her children over to those monsters.
Bianca simply laughed, threatening to drop the incubator into the freezing ocean if they did not comply by dawn.
As the video call abruptly ended, Lorenzo received a secondary, silent text message from a blocked number.
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The text was from Bianca, telling Lorenzo to bring empty blankets to the meet and shoot the cartel boss on sight.
She was offering to betray the cartel and help Lorenzo save the baby, but only if he promised to let her son Julian live.
