Chapter 4 - THE TRANSFER ORDER
Rebecca Sloan, a family-rights attorney working with Detective Ortiz, challenged the order before transport arrived.
She showed the court the poisoned cake, forged paternity report, and Madeline’s conflict of interest.
The judge refused to withdraw.
A private medical team appeared in Luke’s hallway wearing Carter Research badges.
Dr. Reed blocked the door.
“You have no consent.”
The lead physician raised the order.
“We have court authority.”
Brandon stepped beside Dr. Reed.
“You are not touching my son.”
The physician looked at him.
“Legally, he is not your son.”
Brandon’s face tightened.
“He is still my child.”
That was the first sentence since the DNA result that sounded like him.
Madeline arrived with security.
She said transfer was necessary because only Carter Research possessed Luke’s treatment history.
Dr. Reed requested those records.
Madeline refused, citing proprietary confidentiality.
Ortiz arrested the lead transport officer after finding sedatives and restraints inside the ambulance.
The transfer was delayed.
But the judge scheduled a hearing for the next morning.
Rebecca Sloan warned us that biology would become Madeline’s weapon.
She would argue Brandon had no parental standing.
She would claim my fertility consent transferred medical decision-making to the research program.
I did not remember signing such a document.
Rebecca showed me a copy.
My signature looked real.
The date was the morning of embryo implantation.
I had been sedated.
The document authorized storage and scientific use of “resulting biological material.”
Madeline interpreted Luke as material.
Rebecca called that argument monstrous.
The law called it unresolved.
That night, a hospital technician decrypted one of the clinic’s archived videos.
It showed my embryo transfer.
Madeline stood beside the physician.
A younger woman argued with her.
Rebecca Carter.
“You cannot use the final sample,” Rebecca said.
Madeline answered, “Subject Seven failed. We need another child.”
Rebecca tried to remove the vial.
Brandon’s father entered and struck her.
The camera cut.
The vial’s donor code remained visible.
H.C.-01.
Henry Carter.
Brandon’s father.
Luke was genetically Brandon’s half brother.
My husband had been raising his own father’s biological son.
Madeline had created a child with her husband’s stored sample and my egg.
Then placed that child into her son’s marriage.
Brandon read the report.
“My father knew?”
Madeline’s expression softened for the first time.
“He wanted the family line to survive.”
“He used my wife.”
“He gave you a son.”
“No,” Brandon said. “He gave me a lie.”
Then another archived file opened.
It showed Noah alive six months after his supposed burial.
Rebecca stood beside him.
So did Henry Carter.
Noah had not failed.
May you like
He had been moved.
And Henry, whom Madeline claimed died four years earlier, was still alive when the video was recorded last year.
