Page 13 of Silent Night with Massimo

I have to keep my thoughts in line.

Without looking at her I ask the obvious question. "How do you know our son was not stillborn, Vera? Three doctors were present. Three doctors confirmed it. One of those doctors was working with us through every checkup, over nine months. Why would he do something like that - lie about the baby being stillborn?"

"I don't know. Maybe fear? Threats against his family? Maybe he got offered more money than he could say no to - what makes people do stupid things?"

"Why don't you tell me?" I turn to face her, staringdirectly into those bright green eyes. "What makes people betray the ones they say they love?" my words are spiked with venom. Her face scrunches in emotional pain.

"Massimo this isn't helping." She sighs.

"You haven't answered me." I glare at her. "Why do you believe our son was not stillborn?"

She pulls her mouth tight, rubbing her hands against her eyes. "All these years, I thought I was imagining it. You know - the doctors told me it was like a hallucination - my body, as a mother, so desperate to hear my own baby crying that my brain was willing to trick me into believing that he was crying."

"Crying? I was there. I didn't hear it – there was a lot going on – but – I would've heard it," I stammer, trying to think back to that moment. When they told us he was still born I think I shut down. I blocked everything out. My memory of that moment is fuzzy and degraded with pain.

"I heard him. I swear it. No matter how many times they tried to convince me I was imagining it. I know I heard his cries as they carried him away."

I sigh, torn by the desperate need to believe my son is alive, but knowing that believing it means I have to accept the words of this liar. This traitor.

It also means that I have to face the agony of not having spent the last six years with him.

"You expect me to go on a massive hunt for my son based on your word, and your word alone - that you heard him crying. You want me to just believe you? How am I supposed to do that?"

"Because it's true. Because I was framed, made to look like the villain-- and I think they did it all just to get our son. I was nothing more than collateral damage in their plan to kidnap our baby."

"For what purpose, Vera? What did they gain from this?" I shout.

She stands up off the bed, puffing her chest out and pushing her shoulders back. Her eyes are fierce when she speaks.

"I don't care if you question me - I will do my best to answer everything - but don't you dare act stupid. You know very well the power your heir would have when it comes to negotiations and leverage." Her words bite into me. "Besides, if someone wanted to distract you – to hurt you and incapacitate you – what better way than to take away our son and – and me."

Of course, I know it's true. What she says makes sense.

I just can't process all of this.

I bite the inside of my cheek. Holding back my words and my thoughts. I can't let her into my mind.

I have to think.

I have to be rational.

But how do you stay rational when you are filled with hope.

Hope based on what? Her word? Her unrelenting conviction that our son is alive.

But hope that keeps growing no matterhow hard I fight against it.

"What do you have to gain from me believing this lie?" I ask, quietly, more to myself than her.

"What?" She shakes her head, narrowing her eyes at me.

"You heard me."

"Nothing. If I was lying about my own child being alive - it would hurt me more than you - there is absolutely nothing I could possibly gain from sending you on a hunt for a baby that died six years ago."

She turns her back on me to try and hide the tears that I have already noticed.

I force myself to take several deep, slow breaths. This is getting out of hand. My emotions are running so high, they're clouding my ability to think clearly.

---