"Give her to her mother."Former family law attorney Julia Donnelly finds a seven-month-old baby buckled into the backseat of her Subaru, accompanied by a cryptic, chilling note. But the mystery doesn't end when she calls the police-it fractures. Within forty-eight hours, three different women arrive at the precinct, each armed with state-issued, legally binding documents proving the child is theirs.
There is Monica, a traumatized biological mother whose signature was forged while she was heavily sedated. Tara, a desperate adoptive mother who paid $42, 000 for a phantom placement. And Renee, a contracted caregiver who bonded with a child she had no legal right to keep. All three mothers are telling the truth. All three bonds are real. The only thing that isn't real is the paperwork. As Julia is dragged back into the ruthless legal world she tried to leave behind, she uncovers a terrifying adoption fraud ring operating out of her former firm's old office-and her own missing sister might be at the very center of it.
With the police closing in and the orchestrator using Julia's own dark professional past as leverage, she must dismantle a counterfeit system before a stolen child is lost to the bureaucracy forever.
"Give her to her mother."Former family law attorney Julia Donnelly finds a seven-month-old baby buckled into the backseat of her Subaru, accompanied by a cryptic, chilling note. But the mystery doesn't end when she calls the police-it fractures. Within forty-eight hours, three different women arrive at the precinct, each armed with state-issued, legally binding documents proving the child is theirs.
There is Monica, a traumatized biological mother whose signature was forged while she was heavily sedated. Tara, a desperate adoptive mother who paid $42, 000 for a phantom placement. And Renee, a contracted caregiver who bonded with a child she had no legal right to keep. All three mothers are telling the truth. All three bonds are real. The only thing that isn't real is the paperwork. As Julia is dragged back into the ruthless legal world she tried to leave behind, she uncovers a terrifying adoption fraud ring operating out of her former firm's old office-and her own missing sister might be at the very center of it.
With the police closing in and the orchestrator using Julia's own dark professional past as leverage, she must dismantle a counterfeit system before a stolen child is lost to the bureaucracy forever.