CHAPTER 13 — CHARLES BENNETT’S REAL WILL
Preston’s men entered the underground corridor.
Grant barricaded the medical-suite door.
Henry searched for another exit.
Charles pointed toward the oxygen cabinet.
“There is a tunnel behind it.”
Emily looked at him.
“How many hidden passages did you build?”
“Enough to survive my family.”
They moved through the tunnel as gunfire echoed behind them.
Charles could barely walk.
Lydia supported him.
Emily noticed the intimacy between them.
Not the distance of an attorney and client.
Something older.
Something personal.
“Who are you to him?” Emily asked.
Lydia did not answer.
Vanessa answered for her.
“His daughter.”
Everyone stopped.
Emily stared at Lydia.
“My sister?”
“Half-sister,” Lydia replied. “My mother worked for Charles before he married yours.”
Charles looked ashamed.
Emily laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“One more hidden child.”
Lydia’s expression hardened.
“I spent my life protecting a family that pretended I did not exist.”
“So you forged the fertility documents?”
“I preserved the bloodline that rejected me.”
Claire stepped toward her.
“You stole my eggs.”
“I used what Charles had legally purchased from the clinic.”
“My body was not his property.”
“No,” Lydia said. “But the clinic records were.”
Emily saw herself in Claire’s anger.
Different women.
The same violation.
At the end of the tunnel, they entered an underground garage.
A black SUV waited.
Grant drove while Emily sat beside Charles.
She opened the memory card on a laptop.
The footage showed the night of the boat explosion twelve years earlier.
Nathan and another man stood on the deck.
They looked almost identical.
One was wearing Nathan’s wedding ring.
The other carried Charles’s family signet ring.
Claire leaned toward the screen.
“Pause it.”
Emily stopped the video.
Claire pointed at the married man.
“That is my husband.”
Adrian stared at him.
“That man is me.”
Claire turned.
“No.”
“I remember that jacket.”
The footage continued.
Vanessa appeared on the boat.
Younger.
Dressed as a nurse.
Dr. Ward followed her.
Then Preston stepped onto the deck.
Emily felt cold.
Preston had known Nathan long before marrying her.
On the recording, Nathan shouted, “Charles cannot keep switching us whenever one becomes inconvenient.”
The second man replied, “We have to tell Emily.”
Then the camera shook.
An explosion tore through the rear of the boat.
One man fell into the water.
The other disappeared behind the flames.
Vanessa escaped in a smaller vessel.
Dr. Ward followed.
Preston remained on the burning boat long enough to take something from the cabin.
A leather folder.
The original trust.
The video ended.
Charles whispered, “That is what he wanted.”
Emily looked at him.
“What did the original trust say?”
Charles closed his eyes.
“My father believed no single heir should control Bennett Meridian.”
“So?”
“He divided power between three bloodlines.”
Nathan.
Nicholas.
And Henry.
Emily looked at Henry and Adrian.
“The child I am carrying could activate any one of those claims.”
“Yes.”
“Depending on who the biological father is.”
“Yes.”
“And no one knows.”
Lydia opened her bag and removed a document.
“I know.”
It was the original laboratory chain of custody.
Before Emily could read it, the SUV slammed to a stop.
A truck blocked the road.
Masked men surrounded them.
Preston stepped from behind the truck.
He held the original trust in one hand.
In the other, he held a small remote.
“Get out of the car,” he ordered.
Grant reached for his gun.
Preston raised the remote.
“The fertility clinic, Room 614, and this vehicle are all connected to the same emergency system.”
Emily looked beneath the seat.
A red light blinked.
Preston smiled.
“One wrong move, and every remaining record disappears.”
Charles opened the door.
“Let Emily go.”
Preston laughed.
“You still think this is about her?”
He pointed at Lydia.
“Give me the chain-of-custody report.”
Lydia held it against her chest.
Preston looked at Emily.
“Ask your father why he needed Lydia’s blood for the embryo.”
Emily turned toward Charles.
He did not deny it.
Lydia’s face went pale.
“No.”
Preston’s smile widened.
“The child Emily is carrying was created from Henry Bennett and Lydia Shaw.”
Emily stared at her half-sister.
Claire whispered, “Then the baby is not mine.”
Preston shook his head.
“The report says the egg came from Lydia.”
He looked toward Henry.
“And the father was listed as Charles’s twin.”
Henry lunged at him.
Preston pressed the remote.
A blast erupted beneath the road.
The SUV lifted from the ground.
May you like
Emily felt herself thrown forward.
Then everything went black.
