My husband rushed into my hospital room just minutes after I’d given birth, his face drained of all color. “Get up. Take the baby. We have to leave—now.” “What happened?” I whispered, panicking. “I’ll explain once we’re out of here. Please, trust me.” As he pushed the wheelchair toward the exit and I glanced back down the hallway, something made my blood run cold…
The maternity ward at St. Joseph Medical Center in Denver was unusually quiet at midnight. Sofia Dimitri, exhausted from labor, lay in her hospital bed cradling her newborn son, Leo. Her husband, Adrian Moretti, had stepped out hours earlier to grab food and call their families. Sofia assumed he would return smiling, proud, maybe emotional. Instead, he burst into the room like he’d been chased.
His face was pale. His hands shook.
“Sofia—get up. Now. Take Leo,” Adrian whispered urgently, checking the hallway behind him.
Sofia blinked, confused. “What? Adrian, what’s going on?”
“You need to run,” he said, voice trembling. “Please. Don’t ask questions. Just go.”
Her heart kicked hard in her chest. “Adrian—tell me what happened.”
He paced once, then grabbed the diaper bag and stuffed Leo’s blanket into it. “I’ll explain in the car. But if we stay here another minute—Sofia, please.”
The desperation in his voice terrified her more than anything he said. He wasn’t a man who panicked easily. Not ever.
A soft cry from Leo made Sofia snap into action. She slipped into her slippers, clutching her son close with one hand and gripping Adrian’s arm with the other. Together, they moved quickly down the dim hall. Adrian avoided every nurse and doctor, taking a back stairwell instead of the elevator.
“Adrian,” she whispered harshly, “I just gave birth— I can’t—”
“I know. I’m sorry. Just a little farther.”
When they reached the parking garage, Adrian practically ran to their SUV, unlocked it, and opened the passenger door.
“Strap him in,” he said, voice shaking.
Sofia did so with trembling fingers. As soon as she clicked the final buckle, Adrian jumped into the driver’s seat and sped out of the garage.
“Adrian,” Sofia said again, more firmly this time. “Tell me what is happening.”
Her husband took a deep breath.
“I saw someone,” he said. “In the hospital. Someone who shouldn’t be there. Someone who’s been looking for me.”
Sofia’s blood turned cold. “Looking for you? Why?”
Before he could answer, Sofia glanced back at the hospital entrance through the rear window.
A man in a dark jacket stepped out of the building, scanning the parking lot. Then he lifted his phone and spoke into it, eyes locked in the direction of their car.
Sofia froze.
The man wasn’t a stranger.
She recognized him.
And the moment she did, everything she thought she knew about her husband began to crack.
Sofia couldn’t tear her eyes away from the man standing under the bluish glow of the hospital lights. His posture, the sharp tilt of his chin, the stiff way he held his shoulders—she had seen it once before. Years back, before she met Adrian, when she had worked part-time at a café near the University of Washington. The man had come in twice, each time wearing a similar dark jacket. Both times he had stared at Adrian—back then just a stranger buying coffee—with an intensity that made her uneasy.
She remembered asking Adrian, even before they dated, “Do you know that guy?”
Adrian had brushed it off. “Just someone from an old job.”
But the fear she saw in his eyes tonight was not the reaction of someone encountering an old coworker.
As the SUV sped down the near-empty streets, Sofia turned to him. “Adrian, who is he?”
Adrian didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pulled into a quiet neighborhood and stopped the car in front of a dark, empty park. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel, breathing hard.
“His name is Viktor Kalderic,” he said finally. “And he used to be my boss.”
Sofia frowned. “Okay… but why is he following you?”
Adrian lifted his head. His eyes were tired, haunted. “Because I left his company. And I didn’t leave the way he wanted.”
Sofia didn’t understand. Adrian worked as a cybersecurity specialist. His job was remote. Simple. Boring, even. At least, that’s what he always said.
“I thought you worked for Madison & Cole Tech Solutions,” she whispered.
“I did,” Adrian said. “But before that, when I was in my early twenties… I worked for a private contracting firm overseas. They said it was legal. They said they did risk analysis and corporate security. But they were doing things that were… unethical. Maybe illegal.”
Sofia’s breath caught.
“I quit,” Adrian continued. “I walked away. I didn’t take anything with me—not information, not money. Nothing. I just wanted out.”
“So why now?” Sofia demanded. “Why come after you after all these years?”
Adrian rubbed his temples. “Last month, I got an email. Anonymous. It said Viktor was in the U.S. again. I ignored it—thought it was spam. Then yesterday, someone broke into our mailbox. Today, I saw Viktor standing in the hospital hallway.”
Sofia shivered. “Why the hospital, Adrian? Why now—of all nights?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “But when I saw him, he looked right at me. And he smiled. Like he knew something I didn’t.”
Sofia hugged Leo closer.
“Did you see him come into the maternity ward?” she asked.
“No,” Adrian said. “I saw him exiting the stairwell near the nurses’ station. He shouldn’t have been there. He had no visitor badge.”
Silence hung between them.
Then Adrian added, “And there’s something else. When I went to get coffee earlier, I left my phone charging in the hospital room. When I came back… I’m pretty sure someone had moved it.”
Sofia’s stomach twisted.
“Adrian,” she said quietly, “you think he wants something from you. Or from us.”
Adrian didn’t respond.
He didn’t need to.
The tension in his eyes told her everything she needed to know.
They didn’t go home. Adrian drove them to a nearby 24-hour diner with bright lights and clear visibility from all sides. He chose a corner booth where he could watch the entrances. Sofia held Leo close while Adrian called a trusted coworker to ask for temporary help disabling tracking on their phones.
But before he could finish the call, the diner door opened—and Detective Cara DeSoto from Denver PD walked in. She scanned the tables until she spotted them. Adrian’s shoulders stiffened.
“Mr. Moretti?” she asked calmly as she approached. “Mrs. Dimitri-Moretti? I spoke with hospital security. They said there was a… concerning scene earlier.”
Adrian sighed. “Did they already call the police?”
“They did,” Detective DeSoto said. “But I’m here for a different reason.” She slipped a folder onto the table. “Hospital staff reported a man without authorization entering a restricted area. Your husband identified him.”
She opened the folder. A photo of Viktor stared up at them.
Sofia swallowed hard.
“We’ve been tracking Viktor’s presence in the U.S. for several months,” the detective continued. “We believe he’s involved in international corporate sabotage. He uses intimidation to coerce former employees.”
Adrian closed his eyes. “I told you, Sofia.”
“But why come after us?” Sofia asked the detective.
Detective DeSoto sat down. “Because Viktor believes your husband has something important—something he wants back.”
Adrian shook his head vehemently. “I took nothing.”
“That may be true,” the detective replied. “But earlier tonight, a security camera captured Viktor entering your hospital room while you were both in the nursery. He left exactly one minute later.”
Sofia felt a chill race up her spine.
“Why would he go into our room?”
“To plant something,” the detective said. “Or to take something.”
Adrian’s eyes widened. “My phone. I knew it.”
Detective DeSoto nodded. “We already confiscated it from your room. Whoever accessed it attempted to install a remote-tracking software. We disabled it.”
Sofia stared at the detective, shocked. “So he wasn’t after Adrian because of the past?”
“Oh, no,” the detective said. “He was after the present. Your hospital admission triggered a flag through an insurance database Viktor illegally monitors.”
Sofia frowned. “What kind of flag?”
“One tied to Adrian’s old employer,” the detective said. “Viktor is convinced Adrian kept backup files of their old contracts. These would incriminate him. He thought Adrian might have stored them in a cloud drive… one that could be automatically synced when a new dependent was added to the insurance account.”
Sofia gasped. “So when Leo was born—”
“—Viktor thought the sync would reactivate,” Adrian whispered. “He thought I’d expose him.”
Detective DeSoto nodded. “But you didn’t. Someone else already did. And Viktor doesn’t know who. That’s why he’s desperate.”
Sofia felt her fear slowly shift into something else—understanding.
“So we’re safe now?” she asked.
“Not entirely,” the detective said. “But we’ve got federal agents on him. And we can move you temporarily until an arrest is made.”
Adrian reached across the table, taking Sofia’s hand gently.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice shaking. “I never wanted any of this to touch you or Leo.”
Sofia squeezed his hand back.
“Then we face it together.”
Leo squirmed softly in her arms, perfectly unaware of the danger that had brushed past his first hours of life.
But they were safe now.
For the first time all night, Sofia allowed herself to breathe.
