Chapter 3 - THE HOSPITAL FOUND WHAT MONEY HAD MISSED
Leo was admitted before sunrise.
I expected Lorenzo to send me home.
Instead, a detective asked me to stay.
Dr. Chen was a mandated reporter. A two-month-old infant with unexplained failure to thrive, inconsistent caregiver accounts, and possible contaminated feeds could not remain a private family matter because his father had money.
Lorenzo hated that.
He allowed it anyway.
That decision surprised me.
The first lab results came back by afternoon.
Leo was dehydrated and underweight.
More troubling, toxicology showed traces of a sedating antihistamine that had never been prescribed to him.
The prepared formula bottles contained the same medication.
The sealed donor milk did not.
Dr. Chen explained it carefully.
“The amount was not enough to kill him outright. But repeated exposure can make an infant too sleepy to feed effectively. That can create exactly the pattern we’ve been seeing.”
Lorenzo stared through the glass at his son.
“Someone has been drugging him.”
“That is now a reasonable concern,” she said.
Evelyn was questioned separately.
She denied adding anything.
Then investigators examined the nursery medication log.
Entries had been altered.
Feeding volumes recorded on paper did not match the electronic scale records.
Leo had supposedly taken three ounces at midnight on Tuesday.
The bottle weight showed almost none missing.
Someone had been writing feedings that never happened.
Lorenzo’s first instinct was exactly what I feared.
“Give me her address.”
The detective looked at him.
“No.”
For a second, the entire hospital room tightened.
Then Lorenzo looked through the glass at Leo again.
His shoulders lowered.
“Fine.”
He turned to the detective.
“What do you need?”
That was the first serious consequence.
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To find out who was hurting his son, Lorenzo Rossi would have to let outsiders examine the one place he had built his entire life to keep outsiders away from.
And the first records they requested were the mansion’s security logs.
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