Chapter 10 - THE SECOND EMBRYO
I refused to make the promise.
Sophie was not a bargaining chip.
Neither was the missing embryo.
Vanessa’s attorney argued that she had carried, delivered, and cared for Sophie.
Rebecca argued that she had participated in a conspiracy to steal the child’s inheritance.
The court scheduled an emergency custody hearing.
Until then, Sophie remained with Vanessa’s sister under armed supervision.
I saw her for the first time through a nursery window.
She was asleep in a white crib.
One hand rested beside her face.
Dark lashes touched her cheeks.
I had spent years imagining a child who would never exist.
Now she existed six feet away.
I could not enter the room.
Not yet.
I feared that touching her would make every stolen year, every injection, every lie, and every false diagnosis become real at once.
Vanessa watched me from across the hallway.
She wore a detention uniform and wrist restraints.
“You don’t know her,” she said.
The cruelty was quiet.
Perhaps she did not intend it as cruelty.
That made it worse.
“No,” I answered.
“Her favorite song is ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”
I looked through the glass.
“She hates cold bottles.”
“Stop.”
“She sleeps better when someone rubs the center of her back.”
“Stop.”
“I’m her mother.”
I turned toward Vanessa.
“You helped steal her from me.”
“I carried her.”
“You allowed doctors to use my name.”
“I did what Daniel told me.”
“You knew the embryo was mine.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“You knew,” I repeated.
“Daniel said you abandoned the treatment.”
“He told me the embryos died.”
“He said you didn’t want children anymore.”
“And you believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
There it was.
The same excuse everyone around Daniel used.
They wanted to believe the lie that benefited them.
Vanessa’s eyes filled with tears.
“I love her.”
“I believe you.”
She appeared surprised.
“Loving Sophie does not erase what you did.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Protect her.”
“From me?”
“From the entire system you helped build around her.”
Vanessa looked at the floor.
“The second embryo was implanted.”
My heart stopped.
“When?”
“Three months after mine.”
“In whom?”
“I don’t know her real name.”
“Is there another child?”
“The pregnancy failed.”
“How do you know?”
“Evelyn said so.”
Evelyn’s word meant nothing.
Rebecca demanded the clinic records.
The second embryo had been transferred to a woman named Laura Hale.
The address was false.
The identification documents were stolen.
Payment came from Northstar.
The clinic claimed the pregnancy ended after ten weeks.
No medical record confirmed the loss.
An investigator traced Laura Hale through facial recognition from the clinic camera.
Her real name was Maria Torres.
She had worked as a housekeeper at the mansion.
I remembered her.
Maria was quiet, kind, and suddenly dismissed two years earlier.
Evelyn accused her of stealing earrings.
I never believed it.
Daniel told me not to interfere.
Maria had returned to Mexico after being fired.
At least, that was what the staff believed.
Immigration records showed she never crossed the border.
Her phone stopped functioning three days after she left the mansion.
Her bank account remained untouched.
Her family had reported her missing.
The report received little attention because she was an immigrant domestic worker with no powerful relatives.
Marcus located Maria’s younger sister in Texas.
She provided a voice message Maria sent shortly before disappearing.
“I am pregnant,” Maria whispered in Spanish.
“The family says the baby belongs to them.”
“They say I must stay hidden until the birth.”
“I am afraid.”
The recording ended with a door opening.
A woman’s voice spoke in the background.
Evelyn.
“Who are you calling?”
The message stopped.
Investigators searched the mansion again.
This time, they used ground-penetrating radar, scent dogs, and forensic specialists.
The hidden basement room was only the beginning.
Behind the garden wall, they found a small guest cottage not listed on the property plans.
Daniel had converted it into a private medical space.
Restraints had been attached to the bed.
Expired prenatal medication filled a cabinet.
Maria’s fingerprints were everywhere.
There was no body.
There was no birth record.
There was only a bloodstain beneath the floorboards and a handwritten medical log.
The final entry stated that Maria went into labor twenty months earlier.
A male child was delivered alive.
The mother experienced complications.
The next line had been blacked out.
The child’s destination was listed as St. Matthew’s Home.
St. Matthew’s was a private adoption agency three states away.
It had closed the previous year after allegations of illegal placements.
The agency’s former director was Evelyn’s cousin.
Somewhere, I might have a son.
A child created from my stolen embryo.
A child placed with strangers who had no idea where he came from.
Rebecca began searching sealed adoption records.
The next morning, she entered my room holding a photograph.
A toddler stood beside a wooden rocking horse.
He had my father’s eyes.
May you like
His adoptive name was Noah Grant.
His new parents had disappeared with him three days earlier.
