Chapter 3 - THE PATERNITY LIE
Lauren was treated in a secured room.
She had a fractured wrist, a cut above her eyebrow, and sedatives in her blood.
She said Marcus held her in a private Northstar recovery apartment after discovering she copied the original prenup.
She escaped through a service stairwell.
Then she looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
I did not accept it.
I also did not reject the information.
Truth did not require forgiveness.
“What do you mean Marcus isn’t the father?”
Lauren looked at Priya.
Then at Dr. Ellis.
“Ask the fertility clinic.”
I had conceived naturally.
At least, that was what I believed.
Eight months earlier, after two years of trying, Marcus took me to a private clinic for “hormone support.”
They monitored ovulation.
Prescribed injections.
Timed everything.
I became pregnant that cycle.
The clinic belonged to Northstar.
Lauren found payments from Marcus’s company to its embryology division.
Not hormone care.
Embryo creation.
My frozen eggs had been stored years earlier after an ovarian surgery.
I believed they remained untouched.
The clinic records showed one egg had been fertilized and transferred without my informed consent.
I remembered the procedure Marcus called an “endometrial infusion.”
I had been sedated.
The embryo was already inside me before the month we supposedly conceived.
“Whose sperm?” I asked.
Lauren closed her eyes.
“Not Marcus’s.”
The donor file was sealed.
Priya obtained an emergency order.
The clinic resisted.
The judge compelled release.
The biological father was listed by code.
WH-01.
William Harrison.
My father.
I vomited before anyone explained.
Dr. Ellis moved toward me.
I held up one hand.
“No.”
Dad arrived after Priya called him.
He entered the room and saw the report.
His face changed.
“Chloe, I did not consent to this.”
“Your sample.”
“Stored after cancer treatment twenty years ago.”
My father had frozen sperm before radiation.
A Northstar predecessor clinic handled storage.
Marcus gained access through the acquisition due diligence process.
He selected my father’s genetic material.
Why?
The Harrison Family Trust granted direct succession rights only to descendants genetically linked to the founder.
My baby would be my father’s biological child.
Legally my son or daughter.
Genetically my half-sibling.
A nightmare engineered for control.
Marcus believed the unusual genetic relationship could create multiple competing claims.
If I died, Dad might be considered both grandfather and biological father.
If Dad died, the child could become a direct trust beneficiary ahead of other relatives.
Litigation would freeze the estate.
Marcus, holding temporary proxy power, could manage assets during the dispute.
He had turned my body into a legal weapon.
Dad sat down.
For the first time in my life, he looked old.
“I should have moved that sample years ago.”
“This is not about storage.”
“I know.”
“It is about men believing access is consent.”
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
No defense.
Then Lauren revealed why Marcus threatened the baby.
The embryo transfer produced two embryos.
One implanted.
One remained frozen.
Marcus told Northstar he wanted the second preserved as a backup heir.
If my pregnancy failed, another surrogate could carry it.
A woman had already been chosen.
Lauren.
I stared at her.
“You agreed?”
“At first.”
Dad stood.
Priya told him to sit.
Lauren continued.
“Marcus said the embryo was his and yours. He said you had approved a family surrogacy contingency.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wanted to.”
Again.
A lie accepted because it offered something desired.
Lauren signed.
Then she discovered the biological file and tried to withdraw.
Northstar refused.
The second embryo had already been moved.
Recipient: unknown.
The backup pregnancy may have begun.
The room became silent.
Then Priya found a billing entry.
Transfer completed six weeks earlier.
Patient code: EHC-02.
Dr. Ellis searched the hospital system.
A woman using that code had been receiving prenatal care at a private clinic.
Name:
Evelyn Harrison Cole.
My aunt.
Dad’s younger sister.
Sixty years old.
Impossible without medical intervention.
She had carried the family resentment for decades.
Passed over in the company.
Excluded from voting control.
She had agreed to carry an embryo created from my egg and Dad’s sperm.
A child genetically both her niece’s child and her brother’s child.
A succession bomb.
Dad whispered, “Evelyn always believed the trust cheated her.”
Priya said, “Now she may be carrying the claimant she thinks will restore her.”
Then Lauren’s monitor alarmed.
She began convulsing.
The sedative in her blood had not only been used to restrain her.
It carried a delayed toxin.
May you like
Someone expected her to die after reaching us.
Northstar had sent a witness back with a clock inside her body.
