Chương 6
Nathan closed his eyes.
“Where did your mother go?”
“To get the car.”
“What car?”
“The white one. She said she left something in it that proved everything.”
“Did she come back?”
Lily shook her head.
“Did you wait?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Blue cried. I went out. There was blood where Mom sat.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I picked him up.”
“And carried him to the house?”
“He was cold.”
The specialist’s voice softened. “You were cold too.”
“I’m bigger.”
Nathan turned away from the glass.
Delgado followed him into the corridor. “She says the car was near trees. Could be anywhere within several miles.”
“Use my security team.”
“We already are.”
“My helicopters.”
“Ground visibility is better.”
“Traffic cameras.”
“We’re checking.”
“What are you not checking?”
The detective’s expression did not change. “This is the part where powerful people sometimes become dangerous without intending to.”
Nathan’s anger stalled.
She continued. “You’re frightened, so you keep offering larger tools. Larger tools create noise. Noise destroys evidence and scares witnesses. Let us work.”
He looked through the glass at Lily.
“What can I do?”
“Call your mother’s staff. Find out who had access to her vehicles, accounts, phones, and schedule. Give us records without making us subpoena every page.”
William, standing farther down the corridor, heard.
“We need to review any production,” he said.
Nathan took out his phone. “You’re fired.”
William stared at him.
“As counsel,” Nathan said. “For me, the company, the family office. Everything.”
“You cannot make that decision in a hospital corridor.”
“I just did.”
“The board will require—”
“I’ll speak to the board.”
“You are exposing yourself to liabilities you do not understand.”
“You’ve had four months to help me understand them.”
“This is precisely why clients should not make decisions while emotional.”
Nathan looked at him for a long moment.
“You knew someone used an embryo Claire and I created,” he said. “You knew my mother paid a disgraced doctor. You knew a financially desperate woman was carrying the child. You protected me so thoroughly that a seven-year-old had to bring my son through the rain.”
William’s eyes flicked toward the treatment room.
Nathan heard the word after he had said it.
Son.
There had been no DNA test. No legal determination. No consent. Only records, a baby’s hand, and a resemblance that might have been nothing.
He did not take the word back.
William left without another argument.
At 10:43 that night, police found the white car behind a closed garden supply business four miles from the estate. Blood marked the driver’s seat. Elena’s phone lay smashed beneath the brake pedal. A hospital badge belonging to a woman named Jocelyn Pierce was found in the glove compartment, along with prescription pads, sterile packaging, and a locked metal case.
Elena was not in the car.
Security footage from a gas station showed her staggering along the shoulder at 6:19 that morning. Nine minutes later, a dark SUV stopped beside her. The camera angle did not capture the license plate. Elena got in without visible force.
Margaret, after six hours with her attorney, admitted that the SUV belonged to Dr. Voss.
She had called him after Elena failed to confirm the delivery.
“I thought he was going to help her,” she said.
Nathan stood at the far end of the interview room, arms folded.
“You told the man who confined her where to find her.”
“I did not know she had been confined.”
“You knew the baby was born in a basement?”
“No.”
“You knew Voss had lost his medical license.”
“He said the board had acted politically.”
“He had been accused of falsifying records.”
“Accused.”
“You heard what you needed to hear.”
Margaret’s attorney advised her not to respond.
She ignored him. “So did you, for years.”
Nathan almost asked what she meant, then did not. His mother had always relied on curiosity to pull people into arguments she could control.
Margaret saw the refusal and grew impatient.
“Claire did not want those embryos destroyed.”
Nathan’s arms dropped.
“You don’t know what Claire wanted.”
“She wrote to me.”
The separate letter remained sealed in evidence.
Nathan looked toward the observation window. “When?”
“During her final hospitalization.”
“She could barely hold a pen.”
“She held one long enough.”
“What did she say?”
“That you would sign whatever ended the appointments and stopped the nurses from asking. That grief had made you practical. She asked me to prevent you from making a permanent decision in a temporary state.”
Nathan felt heat move up his neck.
“Claire and I made that decision together.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
Margaret’s voice became quiet. “Then open the letter.”
He could not. Not yet.
The hospital released Lily medically the following afternoon but not legally. The newborn, still called Blue in every conversation despite hospital staff using Baby Boy Unknown, remained for additional testing.
Emergency child welfare attorneys appeared. A judge joined a hearing by secure video. Nathan sat in a small conference room with newly retained counsel, a family-law attorney named Dana Whitaker who wore inexpensive glasses and interrupted him the first time he attempted to describe what outcome he expected.
“You don’t get to start with the outcome,” she said.
“I want the children together.”
“That is a preference, not a legal position.”
“It is also what Lily wants.”
“Lily is seven. Her preference matters. It does not decide placement.”
“The infant may be my biological child.”
“May be.”
“The records—”
“May be fabricated, incomplete, stolen, or accurate. We test.”
Nathan disliked Dana within six minutes. By the end of the hour, he trusted her more than he had trusted William in years.
The judge authorized DNA testing, continued hospital supervision for the infant, and placed Lily in temporary emergency care with a licensed foster family experienced with medically fragile sibling groups. Because Lily and the newborn had no established legal sibling relationship, the order described continued contact as therapeutically appropriate rather than mandatory.
May you like
Lily heard only foster family.
“No.”
