Chapter 7 - The embryo marked approved
My obstetric records were transferred to an independent specialist.
The first thing she told me mattered.
“No one can determine anything from the photograph alone.”
Good.
No dramatic conclusions.
Testing first.
Records second.
My treatment history showed ovulation induction after recurrent pregnancy loss.
No documented IVF.
No donor procedure.
Yet Arthur’s encrypted files contained embryo-like images.
Were they mine?
Possibly not.
Then investigators recovered documents from Dr. Cole’s clinic server.
A private program called Continuity.
Twenty-three wealthy families had paid into it.
The Vances were among them.
What was Continuity?
Officially:
Genetic counseling and fertility preservation for high-net-worth families.
Less officially:
Families paid for extensive reproductive screening.
Some legal.
Some ethically questionable.
Arthur wanted a male heir.
That much appeared repeatedly.
Julian was his second son.
Brandon had two daughters.
Arthur obsessed over lineage.
Beatrice too.
But my baby was female.
So why call Chloe’s imaginary child “the real heir”?
Because they wanted everyone to believe another pregnancy existed.
A male pregnancy.
Cover story.
For what?
Then Harris found the answer inside Thomas’s old records.
Arthur had another child.
A son.
Born outside his marriage decades ago.
Thomas had discovered it.
That son had descendants.
Potential claims against old family trusts complicated inheritance structures.
Arthur had spent years trying to consolidate control.
My daughter’s birth apparently triggered a trust clause.
Not because she was male.
Because she would become the first legitimate grandchild born after a particular succession date.
Gender didn’t matter legally.
Arthur’s “male heir” obsession was partly theater.
The real issue was voting control over the family holding company.
If my daughter survived birth, shares would automatically shift into a protected generation-skipping trust.
Arthur would lose direct control over approximately fourteen percent of Vance Meridian.
Enough to threaten his majority if paired with Thomas’s dormant holdings.
My daughter was not emotionally inconvenient.
She was financially dangerous.
Then Harris looked at me.
“Clara, there’s more.”
Thomas had left his holdings not to Arthur.
Not to his own estate.
To an unborn future descendant identified through a bloodline clause.
Legal teams were still analyzing it.
But preliminary interpretation suggested my daughter might inherit part of Thomas’s stake too.
Why?
Because Julian was biologically connected to Thomas?
Obviously nephews share family blood.
But the trust wording was unusually specific.
Then a recovered DNA report appeared.
Julian Vance’s biological father:
Thomas Vance.
I stared.
May you like
Arthur was not Julian’s father.
Thomas was.
