Chapter 5 - The Second Father
Michael had never called the baby his son on the mountain.
Only “the baby.”
Now, with the transfer failing around him, he claimed ownership.
William ordered the feed traced.
Michael laughed.
“You taught me better than that.”
Ashley’s face was pale. Her hands were bound in front of her. Whatever alliance existed between them had ended the moment Michael suspected she might cooperate.
“Why are you holding her?” I asked.
“Because she tried to move the money without me.”
Ashley shook her head frantically.
“He’s lying.”
Michael pressed the weapon closer.
“Tell Emma who signed the original policy.”
Ashley’s voice shook.
“Stephen Mercer.”
“Louder.”
“Colonel Mercer signed it.”
Michael smiled.
“And who created the Hayes Recovery Fund?”
Ashley looked toward William through the camera.
“Laura Bennett.”
My mother.
The room seemed to tilt.
William stared at the beneficiary record.
Laura created the account using his name fifteen years earlier—six years before she died.
She had diverted small portions of Winterglass money into a hidden recovery fund designed to finance witness protection and survivor compensation.
William truly had not known.
But someone else did.
Michael continued.
“Emma, you were told William Hayes was your father because that was the safest story.”
I looked at William.
His face had gone completely still.
“What does that mean?”
Michael leaned closer to the camera.
“Ask him whether he ever saw a DNA test.”
Silence.
I turned toward William.
“Did you?”
“No.”
The answer came quietly.
He believed I was his daughter because my mother told him during their relationship that the baby was his.
The dates fit.
The photographs fit.
Her disappearance reinforced it.
But there had never been genetic confirmation.
Michael opened a folder.
“Laura Bennett was already pregnant when she began working with William’s unit.”
William shook his head.
“That’s false.”
“Then why did she hide the birth records?”
A scan appeared on-screen.
My original certificate listed no father.
A sealed prenatal file named another man as emergency genetic contact.
Stephen Mercer.
Colonel Mercer was not merely the official who erased my identity.
He might be my biological father.
The thought was nauseating.
Mercer had helped my mother disappear.
Altered my records.
Signed the document declaring me dead.
Why?
Not to protect me.
To control the heir tied to Winterglass.
Michael spoke softly.
“Two fathers. One raised a search. One built the cage.”
William looked broken, but he did not look away from me.
“I don’t care what a DNA test says,” he said. “I spent twenty-nine years looking for you.”
Michael laughed.
“Very moving.”
Then Ashley suddenly spoke.
“Emma, he’s not telling you everything.”
Michael turned toward her.
She rushed the words before he could stop her.
“The baby isn’t Michael’s.”
My heart stopped.
Michael’s face twisted.
Ashley continued, crying now.
“Dr. Rowe altered your fertility files. Michael was infertile. Mercer selected a donor.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
My pregnancy had not been natural, as I believed.
Months earlier, Dr. Rowe had recommended a “hormonal support procedure” after a minor fertility concern. According to Ashley, embryos had been created and implanted without my informed consent.
“Whose genetic material?” I asked.
Ashley looked at Mercer’s frozen video image on a side monitor.
“Winterglass kept descendants inside the network.”
No.
The implication was monstrous.
William immediately rejected it.
“We verify before assuming anything.”
Michael smiled at my horror.
“He wanted the child to inherit when you disappeared. I only had to become legal father long enough to collect.”
The baby in my arms stirred.
None of this changed that he was my son.
But the truth of how he was conceived had been stolen from me.
William’s team finally traced the feed to Crestline’s underground records center.
Agents prepared to move.
Michael gave us ten minutes.
“Bring the child,” he said. “William comes alone.”
Then the feed ended.
William moved toward the operations table.
“I’ll go.”
“No.”
“Emma—”
“He wants you because he thinks you’ll trade anything for me.”
“I will.”
“That’s exactly why you cannot decide alone.”
I looked at Ashley’s last frozen expression.
She had turned against Michael because she knew something worse than the affair.
Something he feared she would reveal.
“What was she trying to move?” I asked.
An investigator searched the interrupted transfer.
Ashley had attempted to route forty million dollars into a protected account hours before Michael restrained her.
The account name appeared.
Lily Hayes Child Recovery Trust.
Lily.
Not my son.
A girl.
The trust had been opened twenty-nine years earlier.
On the day I was born.
William read the account history.
Then looked at me with growing horror.
“Emma,” he said, “your mother gave birth to twins.”
I had a sister.
And according to the most recent transaction, she was still alive.
May you like
The person attempting to access the trust was not Ashley.
It was Dr. Natalie Rowe.
