Chapter 9 - THE OTHER DAUGHTERS
Margaret’s ledger identified fourteen female descendants.
Some were missing.
Some lived under false names.
Three were inside private medical institutions.
One was Grace.
One was me.
One was Laura.
One was Lily.
My unborn child and Laura’s unborn child would make sixteen.
Carter Legacy Health had used each generation to refine the treatment Margaret now controlled.
Rebecca Sloan joined the case as federal prosecutor.
She obtained seizure orders against the foundation.
Its laboratories were emptied before agents arrived.
Someone inside law enforcement warned Margaret.
Thomas suspected Sheriff Daniel Cole, a longtime Carter family ally.
Cole had responded to domestic calls at Ryan’s house twice and never filed reports.
Ortiz confronted him.
He denied involvement.
Then his patrol car was found abandoned near Margaret’s former estate.
Inside were Lily’s infusion supplies and a handwritten map.
The map led to an underground laboratory beneath an abandoned cotton mill.
Federal agents entered.
They found three missing Carter women alive.
But Margaret was gone.
So was the treatment formula.
One rescued woman recognized my photograph.
Her name was Rachel Carter.
She claimed she was my sister.
Grace had given birth to twins.
Margaret told her one died.
I was the second.
Grace stared at Rachel.
“I held only one baby.”
Margaret had hidden the twin even from her.
I had a sister raised inside the program.
Rachel had helped develop Lily’s medicine.
She knew most of the formula.
One component remained encoded under Margaret’s private key.
Then Laura’s doctor called.
Her embryo’s genetic donor was Ryan.
Her brother.
Margaret had created an incestuous pregnancy to intensify the mutation.
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Laura collapsed.
The family experiment had gone further than any of us understood.
