Chapter 6 - The Embryo File
My goal was to find out what Legacy Reproductive Center had done.
The clinic turned over records under federal subpoena.
Patient:
Clara Vance.
Egg retrieval:
None.
Embryo creation:
One.
Impossible.
No eggs had been collected from me.
Then the source code.
Maternal genetic material came from a frozen sample collected during ovarian surgery when I was nineteen.
I had a cyst removed.
Tissue preserved for research.
Never reproductive use.
Someone acquired it.
Who?
Charles Benton arranged legal release through a forged consent.
Paternal material:
Julian Vance.
Embryo created.
Frozen.
Three years earlier.
Before I became pregnant naturally.
Why create a backup embryo?
Beatrice’s email:
If Clara fails to conceive, line continuity must not depend on her cooperation.
Cold.
Then Arthur’s reply:
Destroy it.
He knew.
He objected.
But did not report it.
Again.
Silence.
The embryo still existed.
Then another embryo record.
Maternal source:
Chloe Mercer.
Paternal source:
Julian Vance.
I nearly stopped breathing.
Created eight months earlier.
Before Chloe and Julian’s public affair.
Did Chloe consent?
Her signature was present.
She said she signed fertility preservation paperwork.
Not embryo creation.
Page substitution again.
The clinic had created an embryo using Julian and Chloe—uncle and niece—without either understanding the full kinship.
Beatrice had been planning a “replacement heir.”
That explained Chloe’s line at the shower:
“Your child will never be able to replace mine.”
She believed she had an embryo with Julian.
Maybe even that she was pregnant?
Then fresh medical records.
Chloe was not pregnant.
She had been told she was.
Pregnancy test data in her private portal was fabricated.
She thought she carried Julian’s child.
Beatrice knew she did not.
Why tell her?
To intensify rivalry.
Keep her invested.
Then Chloe broke down.
Not performative.
Real.
She had structured her entire behavior around a pregnancy that did not exist.
Then Arthur confronted Beatrice.
“You told her she was pregnant?”
Beatrice said:
“She needed confidence.”
That sentence was monstrous.
Then Legacy’s medical director testified.
Dr. Stephen Mallory.
He admitted accepting Vance funding.
He claimed Charles handled consents.
He did not verify independently.
Professional failure.
Then he revealed a third embryo file.
Maternal source:
Unknown V-3.
Paternal:
Arthur Vance.
Created twenty-three years earlier.
Frozen embryo transfer resulted in live birth.
Child:
Chloe Mercer.
That contradicted the current family story again.
If Arthur was paternal source and Chloe was born from that embryo, Arthur was Chloe’s biological father, not grandfather.
Then how did Daniel/Nathan fit?
The genetic material labeled “Arthur Vance” twenty-three years ago had actually been Nathan’s sample stored under Arthur’s family code.
Administrative shorthand caused confusion.
Full records showed Nathan/Daniel was father.
Elaine Mercer was mother.
Chloe remained Arthur’s granddaughter.
No new paternity twist.
Good.
Then the doctor disclosed one key fact.
Nathan had signed a statement before death refusing any posthumous reproductive use.
Yet Beatrice used his stored material.
That made Chloe’s conception legally and ethically tainted.
Not her existence.
The process.
Then Chloe found a letter from Nathan in the clinic file.
Same one William Mercer withheld.
He wrote:
If I die, do not let my mother’s family or the Vances use my samples.
My mother’s family.
Mercers.
Vances.
Both sides ignored him.
Then we realized Beatrice had not merely concealed Chloe’s identity.
She helped create the conditions of her birth through unauthorized genetic use.
I thought Beatrice saw Chloe as a convenient heir—but she had been shaping Chloe’s existence from before birth.
May you like
**Chloe’s entire place in the succession fight had been engineered before she was born, using genetic material her father had explicitly forbidden anyone to use.**
*The next legal filing revealed why Arthur had spent twenty-two years paying the Mercer family to keep Chloe outside the Vance name.*
