Chapter 11 - The Truth About My Baby
I wanted to dismiss Sloan’s words as another cruelty.
But Naomi insisted on certainty.
We requested an independent prenatal paternity test under federal supervision.
The results arrived twenty-four hours later.
Julian was not the father.
I stared at the number.
0%.
My entire body went cold.
“That’s impossible.”
Dr. Brooks reviewed my medical history.
Then she found a procedure recorded eleven months earlier.
I remembered it as a fertility treatment.
Julian told me we needed help conceiving.
The clinic used his sperm.
At least, that was what I had been told.
The consent form had been altered.
The genetic material came from an anonymous donor identified only as M-17.
Naomi traced the clinic ownership.
A Mercer trust subsidiary.
The procedure had been arranged by Beatrice.
I felt violated in a way language could not hold.
My pregnancy had been engineered.
My child had been used before she even existed.
Keene examined the donor code.
“M-17 was Harrison’s emergency lineage designation.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your father stored reproductive material before cancer treatment in his thirties.”
I stepped backward.
“No.”
The room became silent.
Dr. Brooks spoke gently.
“The sample could have been used after his death.”
My daughter was genetically my child.
And genetically my father’s.
The idea was horrifying.
Legally, ethically, emotionally.
Beatrice had used a dead man’s stored genetic material to create an heir who would trigger the strongest version of the trust.
Why would she do that if the trust destroyed her control?
Keene answered.
“Because she believed she could control the guardian.”
Julian.
Her adopted son.
My half-brother.
If he remained married to me and was recognized as the child’s legal father, Beatrice could influence both sides of the trust through him.
But once Julian turned against me too early and threw me out, the plan cracked.
He believed the baby was his.
Beatrice had never told him the truth.
Vanessa covered her son’s ears as if he could understand.
“This family treats children like documents.”
I touched my belly.
“She is not a document.”
“No,” Naomi said. “She is evidence.”
The baby’s genetics would prove Harrison’s stored sample was used.
That would connect the fertility clinic, Beatrice, and the trust fraud.
It would also destroy Julian’s paternity claim.
We prepared criminal complaints against the clinic.
Then my phone rang.
My mother.
I had not heard her voice since childhood.
“Claire.”
I could not speak.
“I’m sorry.”
“Where are you?”
“Close.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Because Beatrice has watched every road to you.”
“You warned me about Naomi.”
“I was wrong about her.”
“Then come home.”
Silence.
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because Julian found me.”
A man’s voice came through the phone.
Julian.
“Bring the succession schedule to Briarcrest tonight.”
My blood turned to ice.
“Let her go.”
May you like
“Midnight,” he said. “Or you lose your mother for the second time.”
👉 The paternity test exposed Beatrice’s reproductive scheme, but Julian had kidnapped Claire’s living mother and demanded the one document that could destroy his claim forever.
