Chapter 11 - The Children Without Names
Leonard’s clinic had created twelve embryos using genetic material from wealthy families.
Some were implanted.
Some sold.
Some stored.
Children were born under false identities and placed where inheritance, insurance, or medical value made them useful.
Lily was designed as my heir.
Ava was created as Leonard’s potential donor child.
Others were used in private medical trials.
Rachel had names for five.
Seven remained unknown.
The old mountain clinic contained the original database.
Leonard planned to destroy it.
Ava knew the access code because she overheard him in the basement.
We reached the clinic during a snowstorm.
Federal agents surrounded the building.
Rachel insisted on entering.
I insisted too.
Inside, backup generators powered one wing.
Children’s drawings covered the corridor.
Ava’s red shoe lay near the stairs.
We found her locked inside a treatment room.
She ran to Rachel.
“Lily’s dad came.”
The words broke something inside me.
I knelt.
“I’m sorry it took so long.”
She gave me a folded paper.
The database code.
Then a gunshot echoed downstairs.
Leonard appeared with Taylor in front of him.
He had taken her again during the confusion.
A pistol pressed against her neck.
“You should have let the records disappear,” he said.
Taylor looked at me.
For years she had chosen herself.
Now she finally did something different.
She drove her heel into Leonard’s knee.
The gun fired into the wall.
Agents rushed him.
Rachel pulled Taylor away.
Leonard was arrested.
The database remained intact.
It identified eleven children.
The twelfth file had been deleted.
Only one field remained.
FATHER: DAVID MORGAN.
I stared at it.
May you like
Lily was not my only biological child.
And according to the timestamp, the missing child had been born three years before her.
