Chapter 5 - The House With No Family Photographs
Luka refused to take me to a hotel.
He brought Grace and me to his estate outside the city.
Estate was the wrong word.
Fortress fit better.
Stone walls.
Private gates.
Cameras concealed among trees.
Security teams working in silence.
But inside, the house did not look like a billionaire lived there.
No gold.
No trophies.
No framed magazine covers.
No family photographs.
Only books.
Dark wood.
Old furniture.
And emptiness.
I noticed it immediately.
“You live here alone?”
“Yes.”
“That explains the coffee.”
“What?”
“You clearly never have guests.”
He looked at me.
“I have meetings.”
“Meetings don’t count.”
He almost smiled again.
Grace slept upstairs with a nurse provided by the hospital.
I resisted the idea until the nurse handed me her credentials and told me she had twenty-one years of neonatal experience.
Then I cried from relief.
I had slept forty minutes in almost two days.
Luka showed me a locked room beneath his library.
Inside were boxes.
Hundreds.
Some decades old.
“Family archives?”
“Evidence.”
“Against your family?”
“Sometimes those are the same thing.”
He opened a steel cabinet.
Inside was a gray container marked M-17.
My chest tightened.
“You have it.”
“The surviving paperwork.”
“Victor thinks it contains the sample?”
“He doesn’t know the sample was removed years ago.”
“Removed by whom?”
“Your father.”
Inside the container were consent forms.
Surgical records.
Storage contracts.
A donor identification card.
Luka Moretti.
Age nineteen.
Blood type O negative.
I stared at his younger photograph.
No tattoos.
No beard.
A crooked smile.
“You looked normal.”
He stared at me.
“I’m devastated.”
I smiled despite myself.
Then I turned another page.
A transfer record.
My stomach twisted.
M-17 transferred: Mercer Cryogenic Services.
Date:
Three years ago.
Before Derek told me we needed IVF.
“Luka.”
He saw it.
His expression changed.
“That’s forged.”
“How do you know?”
“I never authorized a transfer.”
At the bottom was an electronic approval.
SAMUEL REED.
My father.
I stepped backward.
“No.”
“Emma.”
“He moved it?”
“I don’t know.”
“He lied to me.”
“We already know that.”
“That doesn’t mean he did this.”
A voice came from behind us.
“No.”
We turned.
Rosa stood in the doorway.
“He didn’t.”
She held up a tablet.
“We traced the signature certificate.”
Luka took it.
“Who?”
Rosa looked at me.
“Derek Holloway.”
My knees weakened.
He had not merely known about M-17.
He had moved it.
He had used my father’s identity.
He had planned this.
For years.
The realization was worse than infidelity.
Worse than abandonment.
My entire marriage suddenly looked different.
The sudden suggestion of fertility treatment.
Derek choosing Mercer.
The private payments.
His insistence on handling insurance.
His strange anxiety before the embryo transfer.
He had known.
Maybe not everything.
But enough.
My phone buzzed.
A text.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
My father sat in a chair.
Unharmed.
Behind him stood Victor.
The message contained six words.
BRING THE FILE OR LOSE HIM.
Then another message arrived.
A photograph of a lab report.
My name at the top.
EMMA HOLLOWAY - EMBRYO TRANSFER RECORD
Below it:
PATERNAL SOURCE: M-17.
I dropped the phone.
Luka caught it before it hit the floor.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he looked at me.
May you like
At the woman who had unknowingly carried his biological child.
And I saw the exact moment our lives became permanently tied together.
