Chapter 11 - THE BROTHER AND THE MOTHER
Dr. Reed broke the surgical-room window with an emergency hammer.
Agents entered as Aaron pressed the syringe toward Sylvia’s neck.
She fought him.
Lucy’s monitor alarmed.
In the struggle, the silver cup fell and rolled beneath the operating table.
Aaron released Sylvia and reached for Lucy’s IV line.
Dr. Reed tackled his arm away.
Agents restrained him.
Sylvia tried to escape through a side door.
Rebecca Mitchell was waiting.
Mother and daughter faced each other.
“You left me underground,” Rebecca said.
“You betrayed your brother.”
“I told the truth.”
Sylvia looked around the room.
Natalie.
Rebecca.
Aaron.
Lucy.
Ella.
Every child shaped by her obsession stood within reach.
For one moment, she seemed to see the ruins.
Then she blamed me.
“Anna entered this family and destroyed it.”
Dr. Reed said, “No. Anna survived it.”
Lucy was transferred to intensive care.
Ella refused to leave her side.
Both DNA tests confirmed they were my daughters.
Judge Cole and Ella’s adoptive family were arrested for fleeing court orders, though investigators still had to determine what they knew when the adoptions occurred.
Sylvia and Aaron were taken into federal custody.
The Saint Agnes files exposed hundreds of falsified procedures and adoptions.
It looked like victory.
Then Lucy’s condition worsened.
The VX-17 exposure had damaged her heart over years.
She needed treatment developed by Genesis.
The only existing supply had disappeared.
Aaron claimed Sylvia destroyed it.
Sylvia claimed Aaron hid it.
Dr. Reed searched the laboratory records.
The treatment had been produced from cells taken during my first pregnancy.
A backup dose existed.
It was stored under the name NATALIE REED.
Her own biological material had been used to create it decades earlier.
Dr. Reed could save Lucy.
But the collection records suggested Sylvia had not lost Natalie accidentally.
She had surrendered her to the research program in exchange for money and future access.
Sylvia’s grief story was another lie.
Dr. Reed learned her mother had chosen the system from the beginning.
She signed the donation authorization anyway.
“Lucy doesn’t carry her guilt,” she said.
The treatment stabilized my daughter.
Then federal investigators opened the deepest Saint Agnes archive.
A file listed one more Mitchell daughter.
ANNA MITCHELL.
Birth mother: Sylvia Mitchell.
I was not only Sylvia’s daughter-in-law.
May you like
I was another daughter she had sold.
Aaron was my biological brother.
