Chapter 14 - THE BASSINET RECORDING
The bassinet contained a tiny memory card beneath the mattress support.
Daniel installed it before birth.
The recording began the night we came home.
I slept beside Liam.
Daniel stood over us.
Vanessa entered.
She asked whether he could really go through with it.
Daniel said:
“Maya has to look incapable. Otherwise the court won’t move Liam.”
Vanessa asked, “And if she gets sick?”
“That helps.”
Then another voice spoke.
Helen.
My mother.
She had entered the apartment without waking me.
She told Daniel to leave.
He threatened to expose her own clinic history and claim she was unstable too.
Helen backed away.
She did not tell me the next morning.
Again, fear delayed truth.
My mother listened beside me.
“I thought confronting him would make it worse.”
“It did get worse.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
Then the recording continued.
After Helen left, Daniel leaned over Liam.
“He is not the final child.”
Vanessa asked what that meant.
Daniel answered:
“The successful one hasn’t been born yet.”
The research program planned another embryo.
A child selected from Sophie, Liam, and Noah’s combined genetic data.
Not a sibling conceived naturally.
May you like
A designed successor.
The final embryo remained stored in an offshore clinic.
