Chapter 16 - The Man Who Wore My Brother’s Face
David Laurent told us the truth in the clinic nursery.
At least, he told us the part he could no longer hide.
He had been Daniel’s closest friend.
They attended college together.
They built the early Legacy Project with Evelyn.
David and Evelyn were siblings.
Daniel loved Evelyn.
David loved my mother.
The connections had never been accidental.
“Why did you pretend to be Daniel?” I asked.
David sat with his injured shoulder wrapped in white gauze.
“Because the real Daniel asked me to.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“He disappeared before the crash.”
Samuel frowned.
“The police report placed Daniel in the passenger seat.”
“The man in the car was me.”
David explained that Daniel discovered Arthur had been secretly moving embryos out of the clinic.
Not Bell.
Not Charles.
Arthur.
My father had told everyone he wanted to dismantle the project.
Instead, he had created a second archive.
Daniel planned to expose him.
The night before the crash, Daniel switched identities with David.
Daniel took David’s passport and left the country with the original records.
David remained to protect Evelyn.
Then David cut the brake line, believing Charles would use the car.
“I made the worst mistake of my life,” he said.
“You made many,” I replied.
He accepted that.
After the crash, Bell held David and Evelyn inside the clinic.
Evelyn gave birth to Isabelle.
When Evelyn died, David escaped using Daniel’s identification.
Arthur found him.
“He offered me a choice,” David said. “Disappear as Daniel, or Charles would kill Isabelle and Kylie.”
“So you let me believe my brother was dead.”
“I watched you from a distance.”
“That is not the same as being there.”
“No.”
“Did my father know you weren’t Daniel?”
“Yes.”
Another lie Arthur carried to his grave.
“What about the DNA?” I asked. “The sample labeled Daniel made him my father.”
David looked toward the laboratory wing.
“Because Arthur switched the labels.”
The genetic material stored under Daniel’s name belonged to my biological father.
That still did not answer who he was.
Agent Morris entered holding a recovered file box.
“We found records beneath the nursery floor.”
Inside were paper files too old to have been altered digitally.
One folder carried my mother’s name.
Inside was a prenatal record.
The father field had been blacked out.
But beneath the page, another sheet had absorbed the pressure of the original handwriting.
Samuel shaded it lightly with forensic graphite.
Letters appeared.
THOMAS LAURENT.
David stopped breathing.
Isabelle looked at him.
“Who is Thomas Laurent?”
David’s face had gone white.
“My father.”
Her grandfather.
My biological father.
That made David my half-brother.
It made Evelyn my half-sister.
And Isabelle my niece.
The unborn child created from Evelyn’s egg and Arthur’s sample was Isabelle’s half-sibling—and not related to me by blood through Arthur at all.
The trust’s bloodline claims were based on falsified identities.
Bell had manipulated everything.
Hunter looked overwhelmed.
“Why create so many false family connections?”
Agent Morris answered.
“Because conflicting heirs create lawsuits. Lawsuits freeze assets. Frozen assets give the administrator time to move money.”
Bell had never intended Isabelle’s child to inherit.
He intended the pregnancy to create chaos.
While we fought over biology, he and Charles could drain the Legacy companies.
I turned toward Bell, now seated under guard.
“You never cared who my father was.”
He smiled.
“I cared that you didn’t know.”
A federal agent rushed into the nursery.
“We found the river tunnel exit.”
“Charles?”
“Gone.”
“Margaret?”
“No sign.”
He handed Agent Morris a bloodstained phone.
It belonged to Margaret.
The final outgoing message was addressed to Samuel.
It had not sent.
Samuel opened it.
DAD, CHARLES IS TAKING ME TO THE SAFE HOUSE. THE REAL DANIEL IS THERE.
Below the message was a map coordinate in northern Vermont.
David stood despite Dr. Crowe’s warning.
“I know that place.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Arthur’s mountain estate.”
“My father didn’t own property in Vermont.”
“Not under his name.”
David’s face tightened.
“It was where he kept the children removed from the Legacy Project.”
The room went silent.
“Children?” I asked.
“Some embryos had already been born,” he said. “Arthur hid them before Charles could sell them to clients.”
“Are they still there?”
“I don’t know.”
Agent Morris checked the coordinates.
“The property is registered to a Daniel Rhodes.”
The real Daniel had not disappeared.
He had been living inside my father’s hidden estate.
May you like
And Charles was taking Margaret directly to him.
👉 The real Daniel Rhodes had survived for seventeen years, but the children hidden with him could expose Arthur as either their savior—or the project’s cruelest architect.
