Sixteen Years Ago
Irene Adler leaned against the back of the horridly uncomfortable hospital bed, running her fingers through her dark hair. Her very own child. How did this happen? How would she take care of a child? Wouldn't this disrupt her entire life? It would.
But somehow she couldn't give up the tiny bundle in her arms. Not for the world.
Not even after how much she had complained during her pregnancy, not even after she had bragged about how she was going to give it up for adoption. She couldn't. Especially since the child looked so much like her father, whom she would never know. Irene swore to never speak to him again. She probably made a mistake telling them who the father was, but insisted that they pretend it never happened.
A nurse had taken young Annabeth Holmes-Adler back to the nursery and Irene sat contemplating the meaning of this new stage of life when a police officer rushed into her room to give her the worst news of her life.
The hospital had been broken into. More specifically, the nursery.
And Annabeth was missing.