Chapter 9 - The Child Everyone Claimed
Margaret vanished during evacuation.
No camera clearly showed who moved her.
Hospital administration blamed confusion.
I no longer believed confusion without evidence.
But I also refused to assume Lawson abducted her merely because his name kept appearing.
We needed facts.
Sabrina agreed to bring Leo for independent DNA testing.
Not Lawson.
Not Christian’s lab.
A court-certified facility chosen by my attorney.
Results:
Christian excluded.
Gabriel excluded.
Lawson—
We couldn't test without his sample.
But Sabrina had kept one thing.
A toothbrush from a hotel stay years earlier.
Not enough legally.
Enough privately.
Probability of paternity:
99.8%.
Gabriel stared at the result for ten minutes.
Sabrina cried.
Not because she loved Lawson.
Because she had spent four years letting Christian call another man's son his own.
“How?”
Lawson had treated Sabrina for fertility problems before Christian.
One procedure involved donor material.
She had been told the donor was anonymous.
It wasn't.
Lawson used his own.
Without her informed consent.
The betrayal shifted again.
Christian had not fathered Leo.
But he knew.
Evelyn knew.
Why claim him?
Because Leo’s legal identity could still be useful.
An heir didn't need biology if records could be constructed.
Sabrina looked at me.
“I thought Christian chose us.”
“He chose a structure.”
That hurt us both.
Then she told me something else.
Christian had never been able to have biological children.
A childhood illness left him infertile.
He knew since twenty-one.
Yet he cried through my miscarriages while allowing me to believe each pregnancy was biologically ours.
My hands went numb.
“How was I pregnant?”
No one answered.
Then the truth arrived quietly.
Fertility treatment.
We had used intrauterine procedures after trying unsuccessfully.
Christian told me samples were his.
Lawson handled everything.
If Christian was infertile—
Those pregnancies were never genetically his.
Three babies.
Three losses.
I didn't even know who their biological father had been.
That grief reopened in a completely different shape.
For years I had mourned children imagined from Christian’s eyes and my smile.
Now even the imagined faces were uncertain.
Sabrina reached for my hand.
I almost pulled away.
Then didn't.
Two women manipulated around the same man.
Not sisters.
Not friends.
Not yet.
But no longer enemies.
My attorney called.
Margaret had filed something before disappearing.
An emergency Hartwell trust directive.
It suspended every spousal succession right before my wedding.
Christian could gain nothing by marrying me now.
Relief.
Then dread.
If the marriage no longer mattered financially, what would Christian do when he learned?
Gabriel checked his phone.
Too late.
Message from Christian:
Wedding canceled.
Sabrina received another:
May you like
Pack Leo. We’re leaving tonight.
And my hospital door began to open.
