Chapter 21 - The Husband Who Built the Network
Hunter survived surgery.
The bullet had missed his liver by less than an inch.
By noon, federal agents had sealed the hospital floor, posted guards outside his room, and restricted every visitor except his attorney.
I stood behind the observation glass while he slept.
His face looked younger without the arrogance.
Almost like the man I had once believed he was.
Agent Morris stood beside me holding a folder thick with banking records.
“Isabelle’s statement checks out,” she said.
I kept my eyes on Hunter.
“How much did he know?”
“He opened six international holding accounts. Three were linked to fertility clinics in Switzerland, Cyprus, and Argentina.”
“Did he sell embryos?”
“We haven’t proven that yet.”
“But he funded the transfers.”
“Yes.”
I remembered Hunter at the dinner.
Finally, everything will belong to us.
At the time, I thought he meant my trust.
Now I understood.
He meant the network.
Isabelle had not simply been his mistress.
She had been his business partner.
The affair had helped hide their meetings, payments, and travel.
Their pregnancy created a legal weapon.
Their romance created a believable motive.
Beneath both was an industry built around stolen identities.
“When can I speak to him?” I asked.
“When he wakes.”
“He’ll lie.”
“Then give him a reason not to.”
Agent Morris handed me a second file.
It contained Charles’s preliminary confession.
After his arrest, Hunter’s father had tried to trade information for immunity.
He accused Bell.
He accused Isabelle.
He accused Arthur.
He blamed everyone except himself.
But he admitted Hunter knew the international clinics existed.
He claimed Hunter volunteered to manage their finances.
I entered the hospital room thirty minutes later.
Hunter opened his eyes when he heard the door.
“Kylie.”
“Isabelle says you hired her.”
His expression changed.
Not surprise.
Calculation.
“That’s complicated.”
“No. It’s a sentence.”
He looked toward the federal guard outside.
“Is this being recorded?”
“Yes.”
“Then I need counsel.”
“You can have counsel.”
I placed the divorce papers on his bedside table.
“But before your lawyer arrives, I want you to understand something.”
He stared at the papers.
“I’m not asking for money.”
“You will get none.”
His jaw tightened.
“The trust has already removed you from every Rhodes company, property, account, and voting right.”
“You can’t do that while I’m hospitalized.”
“I did it while you were in surgery.”
He looked at me with disbelief.
For years, Hunter had assumed I needed him to manage my inheritance.
Now he was learning that I had understood every clause better than he did.
“You used me,” he said.
I almost laughed.
“No, Hunter. I stopped you from using me.”
He turned away.
I placed the bank records beside the divorce papers.
“Five children are missing. You know where they are.”
“I know where the embryos were sent.”
“Then tell Agent Morris.”
“I need protection.”
“From whom?”
He looked at me again.
“People worse than my father.”
“That answer does not buy you mercy.”
“I can identify every buyer.”
“Then do it.”
“What do I receive?”
There he was.
Even wounded, Hunter believed truth was something to sell.
“You receive the chance to prevent children from growing up inside the lie you helped create.”
“That isn’t a legal offer.”
“No.”
I leaned closer.
“It is the only human one you’re getting from me.”
He studied my face.
“You really don’t love me anymore.”
I felt the old ache.
But it no longer controlled me.
“I loved the man you pretended to be.”
He closed his eyes.
For the first time, a tear slipped toward his temple.
“I did not create the network.”
“Then who did?”
“Isabelle.”
“She says you hired her.”
“I hired her to investigate Charles.”
I stared at him.
He explained that two years earlier, he discovered irregular payments from Vale companies to foreign clinics.
He hired Isabelle, a corporate intelligence consultant using a false résumé, to trace them.
Instead, she told him the Legacy network could be controlled.
He should have exposed it.
He chose to join her.
“Why?”
His answer was almost a whisper.
“Because I thought if I controlled the network, my father could never control me again.”
Power disguised as freedom.
The same mistake every man in this story had made.
“Where are the missing children?”
He gave me three addresses and two foundation names.
Agent Morris entered and recorded every detail.
One missing child had been adopted by a political family in Virginia.
Two were being held in a private clinic outside Geneva.
One lived with a billionaire couple in Buenos Aires.
The youngest, a six-year-old boy, had been placed inside a behavioral research center in Maine because his genetic profile did not match the buyer’s expectations.
Agent Morris’s face hardened.
“We can rescue them.”
Hunter looked at me.
“There’s one more.”
“You said five.”
“There are six.”
Isabelle had hidden an additional child from everyone.
“Who?”
Hunter swallowed.
“A girl named Emma.”
“Where is she?”
He looked toward the divorce papers.
“Inside your Manhattan penthouse.”
My blood turned cold.
“There was no child in the penthouse.”
“Not in the residence.”
He took a painful breath.
“In the sealed service apartment behind the west elevator.”
I remembered the elevator footage.
Bell entering.
His coat falling.
No one exiting.
The elevator had opened into a hidden floor.
Hunter had known all along.
“How long has she been there?”
“Three months.”
I stepped back in horror.
Three months.
May you like
A child had been imprisoned inside my own home while I slept on the other side of the wall.
👉 Hunter had finally exposed Isabelle’s last secret, but the hidden child inside Kylie’s penthouse had been waiting for someone she called “Mom.”
