Chapter 5 - The Father We Buried
My father, Arthur Rollins, died in a private plane crash when I was twenty-four.
There was wreckage.
A memorial.
A sealed casket.
Harrison stood beside Justin and me at the funeral and promised he would protect us.
Now a man with my father’s face was waiting in a black sedan outside Saint Anthony Medical Center.
Older.
Thinner.
But unmistakably alive.
Corporate security detained no one. They kept the vehicle under observation while federal financial investigators were contacted because the stolen files involved cross-border transactions.
Maya was brought into a secured interview room.
Justin wanted to confront her.
I stopped him.
“Not until we know what she’s carrying.”
The flash drive contained only part of Project Aurora.
The most sensitive sections were missing.
Maya broke quickly once she learned Kenneth had blamed her for everything.
“He said we were leaving together,” she cried.
Justin stared at her through the observation glass.
“You planned to leave me?”
She looked at him.
For one second, shame appeared.
Then survival replaced it.
“Harrison paid me to watch Sabrina’s accounts. Kenneth was supposed to move the money. I was only managing the consulting company.”
“Only?” Justin asked.
Maya began sobbing.
She claimed the affair started after Kenneth told her Justin would lose everything when Rollins Global collapsed. Kenneth promised protection, money, and a life abroad.
She believed him because Harrison supported the story.
“What does my father have to do with this?” I asked.
Maya looked confused.
“That isn’t your father.”
I showed her the security image.
She shook her head.
“Harrison calls him Arthur, but Kenneth calls him Mr. Vale.”
A disguise.
Cosmetic alteration.
A manufactured resemblance designed to shock us if he was seen.
The man outside was not my father.
He was Adrian Vale, former head of financial operations at a rival conglomerate.
But the impersonation had a purpose.
Harrison wanted Justin and me destabilized by the impossible sight of our dead father.
Another engineered emotional incident.
Another reason to call us unfit.
Adrian was taken into custody when he attempted to leave.
His devices revealed the buyer behind Project Aurora.
A foreign acquisition group had paid Harrison to sabotage Rollins Global’s medical logistics deal, trigger a debt crisis, and sell the company’s most profitable divisions at a fraction of their value.
Kenneth’s reward would be eight percent of the reorganized company.
Maya would receive two million dollars.
Dr. Shaw would receive protection from fraud charges.
And Harrison would remain chairman under the new owners.
“What about the embryos?” I asked Maya.
Her face changed.
That reaction told me she knew more.
“Kenneth said they were insurance.”
“Explain.”
“He said if you discovered everything, he could give you back the chance to become a mother in exchange for your silence.”
The cruelty of it nearly stopped my breathing.
They had preserved my embryos not out of mercy.
As leverage.
Maya continued.
“But last month, Harrison ordered Dr. Shaw to transfer them.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
My phone rang.
The fertility clinic’s storage director.
Six embryos had been removed from the Denver facility at 6:30 that morning using forged emergency relocation papers.
The transport courier listed a destination in New Mexico.
But the vehicle’s tracking system had stopped transmitting near the Colorado border.
I looked at Dr. Shaw through the glass wall of the adjacent interview room.
She lowered her head.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked when they brought her in.
Her voice was barely audible.
“There weren’t six embryos in the shipment.”
“How many?”
“Five.”
The room became silent.
“What happened to the sixth?”
Dr. Shaw began crying.
“It was transferred four years ago.”
Justin gripped the back of a chair.
“To whom?”
Dr. Shaw looked at Maya.
Maya’s face emptied.
Then Dr. Shaw whispered:
“She was never told whose embryo it was.”
May you like
Justin stopped breathing.
Because Maya and Justin had a three-year-old son.
