Chapter 10 - Dr. Cole tells the truth
Federal agents found Dr. Nathan Cole alive.
Terrified.
Hiding.
He surrendered.
His account dismantled several assumptions.
The “approved embryo” photograph had nothing to do with my pregnancy.
It belonged to a separate Continuity research file.
Arthur copied records and placed them inside my dossier to create ambiguity.
My daughter had been conceived naturally during a medicated cycle.
No donor.
No embryo transfer.
No specimen substitution.
Independent testing later confirmed Julian was her biological father.
Relief came strangely.
I would have loved my daughter regardless.
But I hated that Arthur had weaponized uncertainty around my body.
Then why did Cole take Vance money?
Because he had done other things.
Falsified fertility reports for Vance family members.
Concealed Arthur’s infertility.
Manipulated reproductive records to protect public narratives.
Ethically rotten.
Potentially criminal in places.
But he had not altered my conception.
Then Harris asked:
“Why run?”
Cole answered:
“Because Arthur called me at noon.”
Before the raid.
“What did he say?”
“Destroy everything relating to Thomas.”
Not Clara.
Thomas.
Cole had treated Thomas Vance shortly before his death.
Thomas had not died from suicide.
There it was.
Official story:
Overdose after depression.
Actual medical record:
Blunt-force trauma.
Then overdose.
Potential homicide concealed as suicide.
Cole didn’t perform the autopsy.
But Arthur paid him to provide prior medical history supporting depression and substance abuse.
Thomas’s death had been manufactured narratively.
Who killed him?
Cole did not know.
But he possessed one thing Arthur feared.
Thomas had come to his clinic days before dying because he was planning to leave the Vance family structure completely.
He also requested genetic testing.
For himself.
Julian.
And someone else.
A child named Samuel Reed.
I stared.
“Who?”
Not Agent Harris.
Samuel Reed.
Different man.
Age today: thirty-four.
Thomas suspected he had another biological son.
If true, Julian wasn’t Thomas’s only child.
The succession trust might have another branch.
Arthur had spent decades fighting an inheritance structure more complicated than anyone knew.
Then Harris received another call.
Samuel Reed had been located.
He worked as a union electrician in Baltimore.
No known connection to the Vances.
Until agents showed him Thomas’s photograph.
Samuel stared.
May you like
Then said:
“That’s the man who paid for my college.”
