I checked the bottle Caroline had prepared and warmed it carefully, but Ethan refused to drink and cried louder with each passing second, his tiny face turning red as his body stiffened.
“Shh, sweetheart, it’s okay,” I whispered, though my voice trembled as his cries grew sharper and more desperate than anything I remembered from raising children.
He gasped between cries as if he could not catch his breath, and when his body suddenly arched and he let out a piercing scream, my heart dropped with a cold certainty that something was very wrong.
I decided to check his diaper, trying to convince myself it might be something simple, but the moment I lifted his onesie, everything inside me froze.
Just above the diaper line on his lower abdomen was a dark, swollen bruise shaped like fingerprints, deep purple against his fragile skin in a way that could not be explained away.
My hands began shaking as a single thought repeated in my mind with terrifying clarity, someone had hurt him.
I did not hesitate after that, and I wrapped him in a blanket, grabbed the diaper bag, and rushed to my car without calling Adrian or Caroline.