Chapter 6 - The woman beside Grace’s incubator
Her name was Amelia Pierce.
Nathan’s widow.
The records saying he had never married were wrong.
They had married privately nine years earlier.
“Did Nathan have children?” Caleb asked.
Amelia looked toward Grace.
“No.”
Lorraine’s motive seemed to collapse again.
Then Amelia corrected herself.
“Not with me.”
Nathan had fathered a daughter before their marriage.
She would now be twenty-seven.
He spent years trying to find her.
Charles knew.
Lorraine knew.
And according to Amelia, Lorraine had once offered Nathan $2 million to sign a document renouncing any Rowan inheritance.
He refused.
“Why?”
“Because he said it wasn't about money.”
“What was it about?”
Amelia handed Caleb a letter.
Nathan believed Charles Rowan's fortune had been created through land his biological mother’s family originally owned.
The Rowans had acquired it under circumstances Nathan considered fraudulent.
The $186 million wasn't simply inheritance.
It was an old family wound.
Then Amelia looked at me.
“Lorraine contacted me three months ago.”
“What did she want?”
“Proof Nathan was dead.”
“And?”
“She asked whether he had descendants.”
My pulse accelerated.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I didn't know.”
Lorraine wasn't protecting Nathan's heir.
She was hunting for them.
Detective Cole traced Nathan’s search.
He had eventually located his daughter.
But he never contacted her.
Why?
Because he discovered who had raised her.
Caleb received the name first.
He read it.
Then sat down.
“What?”
He handed me the page.
Rachel Morgan.
Dr. Elias Morgan’s older sister.
I stared.
Elias was not Nathan's son.
But his niece was Nathan’s daughter.
Which meant Dr. Morgan's family was tied to the Rowan trust.
Was that why Lorraine photographed him?
Had she known?
Elias looked horrified when confronted.
“My sister had a daughter when she was nineteen.”
“Where is she?”
His face changed.
“She died.”
“How?”
“Car accident. Three years ago.”
Another dead heir.
Then:
“She had a child.”
Silence.
A little boy.
Five years old.
Nathan’s grandson.
The surviving heir to the second lineage.
And according to Elias, the boy had disappeared from his father’s custody six months earlier.
Police classified it as a parental-family dispute.
Lorraine had started collecting my pregnancy records around the same time.
Now we finally understood something.
Lorraine wasn't trying to obtain $186 million for herself.
She was trying to control which child inherited it.
But we still didn't know why.
Then Detective Cole received the hospital surveillance footage from the morning I nearly died.
Lorraine wasn't alone when she entered our townhouse.
Someone had waited inside her car.
A man.
When the image was enhanced, Caleb whispered:
“No.”
Because he recognized him.
May you like
It was his late father’s attorney.
The trustee controlling the entire $186 million.
