Chapter 6 - THE PRICE OF A SON
The judge suspended the custody petition and placed Jonah with Travis and Brooke under temporary protective supervision.
Lorraine did not win.
But she did not lose enough.
Outside the courthouse, reporters crowded the steps.
Evan disappeared through a side exit.
Owen remained behind.
Travis confronted him in a private conference room.
“You signed away your son.”
Owen looked older than he had the day before.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was desperate.”
“That is not an answer.”
Owen sat down.
Elias’s surgery had cost more than they could pay. Franklin offered to cover it if Owen signed a temporary guardianship agreement.
Owen signed.
But the document Evelyn later brought to him was not temporary.
It was an adoption surrender.
“Lorraine said the surgery failed,” Owen whispered. “She brought me a death certificate.”
“You did not read what you signed?”
“I was twenty-four. My child was turning blue in my arms. I would have signed my own life away.”
“You signed his.”
Owen closed his eyes.
Travis wanted to hate him.
But the truth was more complicated.
And complications were becoming the family inheritance.
At the hospital, Evelyn regained consciousness again.
This time Reed posted an officer outside her room.
She explained that Franklin Calder had orchestrated the entire arrangement. He wanted Lorraine and one healthy infant. Elias’s condition made him inconvenient.
Evelyn had been a young nurse.
She agreed to take the baby temporarily.
Then she could not give him back.
“I told myself I saved him,” she said to Evan, who stood at the foot of her bed. “But I also kept the truth from you.”
Evan’s face was unreadable.
“You were my mother.”
“I still am, if you allow it.”
He looked away.
Brooke understood then that blood was not the only thing that had been stolen.
Evan had lost the right to know where he came from.
Travis had lost the right to know who his family was.
Both men had been raised inside different lies.
That night, Brooke and Travis returned to the mansion with Jonah.
The police had released the nursery after processing the scene.
Brooke stood in the doorway but could not enter.
Travis carried Jonah upstairs.
“We can move,” he said.
“This is our house.”
“It is not worth your fear.”
“It is not the house.”
She looked at him.
“It is the fact that she knew exactly how to make you doubt me.”
He flinched.
“I will spend the rest of my life regretting that.”
“I don’t need regret.”
“What do you need?”
“Change.”
He nodded slowly.
“I canceled her access cards. Changed the locks. Froze every account she could touch.”
“That is security.”
“What else?”
Brooke looked toward the nursery.
“I need you to stop treating silence like peace.”
The words settled between them.
Travis had spent his life managing Lorraine by avoiding confrontation. He called it respect. Brooke now named it correctly.
Fear.
He sat beside her on the hallway bench.
“I will not be silent again.”
She believed he wanted that to be true.
But wanting was not the same as becoming.
At midnight, Reed arrived with new information.
The hidden nanny camera had captured more than the nursery attack.
It had recorded Lorraine entering the room the previous evening with Dr. Vale.
The footage showed Vale replacing Brooke’s prescription bottle with another bottle.
“Was it poison?” Travis asked.
“We’re testing it,” Reed said.
Brooke went pale.
Reed continued.
“There is another issue.”
The camera’s audio captured Vale telling Lorraine, “Once she fails the blood test, the court will hand you the child.”
Brooke stared.
“They planned to drug me.”
“It appears so.”
Travis’s hands clenched.
“Then arrest them.”
“We need toxicology confirmation.”
Jonah began to cry in the next room.
Brooke rose instinctively.
Then the mansion lights went out.
The entire house dropped into darkness.
A second later, glass shattered downstairs.
Travis reached for Brooke.
Reed drew his weapon.
From the nursery monitor came the sound of someone breathing.
May you like
Then a man’s voice whispered through the speaker.
“You should have taken the deal.”
