CHAPTER 17 — THE NAME INSIDE HER HEAD
Ethan lunged toward Noah.
Noah immediately pressed the syringe closer to the baby’s arm.
“Take one more step and you lose the only evidence left.”
Ethan froze.
The newborn began to cry softly.
“What is in the syringe?” Ethan asked.
“A genetic stabilizer.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means the child will not survive without it.”
Claire—or the woman calling herself Evelyn—stood without moving.
Vanessa remained unconscious on the hospital bed, one wrist restrained by a leather strap.
“You kidnapped them,” Ethan said.
Noah’s jaw tightened.
“I rescued them from the brothers.”
“Claire left with them willingly.”
“Because Helen built a command into her memory.”
Ethan looked at his wife.
“Claire, listen to me.”
She gave no response.
Noah shook his head.
“That name cannot reach her right now.”
“What did Helen do?”
“She created separate identities to protect different memories.”
Ethan stared at him.
“You are saying my wife has another personality?”
“I am saying a frightened eight-year-old was taught to hide the truth where no interrogation could reach it.”
Noah nodded toward the wall.
Several television screens showed recorded therapy sessions.
In one video, a young dark-haired girl sat beside Helen Carter.
“When someone says Claire,” Helen told her, “you remember the new family.”
“And when someone says Evelyn?” the child asked.
“You remember the plane.”
The girl looked frightened.
“What if they find Daniel?”
Helen leaned close.
“Then Evelyn protects him.”
Ethan turned away from the screen.
“Helen erased her life.”
“She saved it,” Noah replied. “Margaret and Marcus were searching for the surviving child.”
“Which child?”
“The one who saw the brothers exchange places.”
Ethan faced the woman beneath the surgical light.
“What do you remember?”
Her voice was calm and distant.
“Fire.”
“Who caused the crash?”
“The man everyone called Daniel.”
“Which brother was he?”
“I do not know their original names.”
Noah lowered the syringe slightly.
“Tell him what you saw afterward.”
The woman looked at Ethan.
“One brother crawled from the wreckage. His face was burned. Thomas Reed pulled him away.”
“My father?”
“Thomas was not your father then.”
Ethan stiffened.
“What does that mean?”
“After the crash, Helen gave Thomas Daniel’s documents. Margaret gave him Daniel’s face.”
Margaret had claimed the pilot became Daniel Blackwood.
But Claire’s memory suggested something more complicated.
A surviving brother.
A pilot.
Plastic surgery.
Three men whose identities had been exchanged.
“Why?” Ethan asked.
“Because the real Daniel had hidden the company evidence. Margaret needed someone she could control until she found it.”
“And the injured brother?”
“He was taken to St. Aldwyn.”
“Was he Daniel or David?”
The woman’s face tightened.
“Helen told me never to answer that question.”
Noah checked the baby’s pulse.
“We are running out of time.”
Ethan looked toward Vanessa.
“What did you do to her?”
“She tried to take the baby.”
“Because she believed the child was hers,” the woman said.
Ethan turned sharply.
Vanessa had never mentioned pregnancy.
Noah removed a file from beneath the medical tray.
According to the records, Vanessa’s eggs had been collected during a procedure she underwent at nineteen. She had been told it was treatment for an ovarian condition.
Claire’s genetic material had also been stored during her childhood hospitalization.
The newborn had been created using one woman’s egg and carried by a secret surrogate.
The records did not identify which woman was the biological mother.
“Who is the father?” Ethan asked.
Noah looked at him.
“You.”
Ethan felt as though the room had shifted beneath his feet.
“That report said the baby might be mine.”
“It is yours.”
“I never provided a sample.”
“Yes, you did.”
Noah showed him a consent form from a fertility clinic Ethan and Claire had visited after two early pregnancy losses.
The clinic had preserved samples without their permission.
Ethan looked at Claire’s stomach.
“Then what about our unborn child?”
Noah did not answer.
“Is that baby mine too?”
The woman calling herself Evelyn finally lowered her hands from her stomach.
“No.”
Ethan could not speak.
She continued.
“This pregnancy was arranged before I met you.”
“You are lying.”
“I did not remember until tonight.”
Noah turned on another screen.
It showed Claire inside a private clinic eleven months earlier, weeks before she married Ethan.
She lay unconscious while a doctor performed a procedure.
Standing nearby were Helen Carter and Adrian Shaw.
Helen was supposed to have been dead for years.
“The baby Claire is carrying belongs to one of the brothers,” Noah said.
“Which one?”
“That is what the newborn was designed to prove. Your child contains enough genetic markers to distinguish the men.”
Ethan looked between the infant and Claire.
One child was biologically his.
The other carried the blood of Daniel or David Blackwood.
The entire succession war depended on knowing which was which.
Vanessa suddenly opened her eyes.
“Noah,” she whispered.
He turned.
She pulled one hand free and struck the syringe from his grip.
It shattered on the floor.
Noah stared at the spilled medication.
The newborn’s cries weakened.
“What have you done?” he shouted.
Vanessa sat up, breathing hard.
“That wasn’t medicine.”
She pointed at the broken vial.
“It was meant to destroy the baby’s blood markers.”
A red alarm began flashing over the door.
Noah checked the security screen.
Armed men were entering the hospital through the tunnel.
At the front of the group was the uninjured Blackwood brother.
He held Claire’s wedding ring between his fingers.
He looked directly into the camera and smiled.
Then he spoke into the intercom.
“Evelyn, bring me my child.”
The woman beside Ethan stepped forward.
May you like
But she was not looking at the newborn.
She was looking down at her own stomach.
