Chapter 15 - The Lowest Point
The board meeting collapsed.
The vote was suspended for twenty-four hours.
Not because anyone wanted to help us.
Because nobody understood who Grace’s biological father was anymore.
The story hit the press.
Within three hours, headlines appeared.
MORETTI HEIR DISPUTE INVOLVES NEWBORN
BILLION-DOLLAR DNA MYSTERY
HOLLOWAY FAMILY LINKED TO FERTILITY SCANDAL
I turned off every screen in the house.
Grace was not a headline.
She was not a trust clause.
She was my daughter.
But the worst blow came that evening.
Child protective services arrived.
Someone had reported that Grace was being used in a high-risk corporate dispute.
The report alleged kidnapping threats.
Medical tampering.
Unverified parentage.
Illegal security confinement.
Most of it distorted.
Some of it true enough to sound dangerous.
A judge ordered Grace temporarily restricted from leaving the county.
I remained her legal mother.
But every movement became supervised.
Then Luka was arrested.
The charge concerned the hospital parentage form.
Brittany had submitted evidence claiming Luka knowingly falsified legal paternity documents.
The form had never been filed.
It should have been meaningless.
But Victor wanted Luka removed from the board meeting.
It worked.
For six hours, Luka sat in a police station while lawyers fought.
I sat alone in the nursery.
My mother was asleep upstairs.
My father had disappeared into guilt.
Derek was cooperating with prosecutors.
And I felt more alone than I had in the hospital.
Grace woke.
I lifted her.
“I’m sorry.”
She stared up at me.
“You deserved a normal family.”
Then I stopped.
No.
That was the wrong thing.
Normal had been Derek smiling beside me while lying.
Normal had been my father pretending my mother was dead.
Normal had been Victor hiding crimes under money and respectability.
Maybe Grace did not need normal.
Maybe she needed truth.
I kissed her forehead.
“We’re going to build something better.”
At midnight, the hospital nurse from the first day called.
Her name was Rachel.
“I remembered something.”
“What?”
“The duplicate bracelet.”
My heart quickened.
“The one printed after Grace was born?”
“Yes.”
“I checked the printer log before IT locked me out.”
“The user account belonged to Mercer.”
“That’s not new.”
“No.”
“But the physical terminal was in the executive maternity suite.”
“Who was in there?”
Rachel hesitated.
“Brittany Cole.”
Everything inside me sharpened.
“And there’s more.”
“The system archived a camera still.”
Rachel sent it.
Brittany at a hospital workstation.
Forty-seven hours before Grace’s birth.
Exactly when M-17 restrictions had been created.
She had not reacted to the scheme.
She was operating it.
I zoomed into the photograph.
On the desk was a folder.
A patient label.
Not mine.
NATHAN HOLLOWAY.
The name meant nothing to me.
But when Derek saw it, he stopped breathing.
“My brother.”
“You have a brother?”
“Had.”
“What happened?”
Derek stared at the name.
“He died when I was five.”
“How old was he?”
“Nineteen.”
My mind clicked into place.
Victor’s other son.
The missing genetic link.
The name Brittany had been trying to hide.
Then Derek whispered,
“My father always said Nathan died in a boating accident.”
I looked at him.
May you like
“Did anyone ever see the body?”
Derek shook his head.
