The first thing Lucia learned was that the child officially did not exist.
No birth certificate accessible through standard registries. No hospital record that survived intact. No parent listed, no guardian acknowledged. Just a sealed identifier embedded deep inside an international protection database, the kind used only when governments wanted problems buried rather than solved.
Lucia stared at the file as if it might blink first.
This was not negligence. This was design.
She closed the interface and leaned back in her chair, letting the implications settle with the weight they deserved. Somewhere in the world, a child was breathing, growing, forming attachments, while powerful institutions argued over who had the right to shape their future. Or erase it.
Vivienne had always preferred children who could not testify.
