Chapter 8 - The Donor
Patrick Callahan had lied.
My daughter's prenatal results weren't the breakthrough.
Vincent's adult genetic profile was.
Patrick needed his son.
So why involve me?
Because Vincent would never willingly enter his father's hidden medical facility.
Patrick needed bait.
The baby.
Me.
Evan.
The entire mountain scenario had been engineered to bring Vincent into the open.
“But how did they know he'd help me?”
Evan looked at Vincent.
“They knew.”
That bothered Vincent.
Patrick understood his son better than Vincent wanted to admit.
The warehouse attack failed.
Declan's security team captured two men.
One carried an injectable sedative calibrated for Vincent's weight.
Proof.
Patrick wanted him alive.
We moved again.
My daughter finally slept.
I hadn't named her.
I had spent months calling her Sophie.
But suddenly even that felt contaminated because Evan and I had chosen it together.
Vincent sat across from me.
“You should sleep.”
“You should stop telling me what to do.”
“Fair.”
I looked at him.
“Would your father really use you?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
That was sadder than anything dramatic could have been.
“Why did you become like him?”
“I didn't.”
“You run the same empire.”
“No.”
His voice remained calm.
“My father enjoyed fear. I find it useful.”
Not exactly comforting.
But honest.
I trusted honesty more than goodness now.
Then my baby woke.
Vincent immediately stood.
She quieted when he approached.
I almost laughed.
“She likes you.”
“Poor judgment.”
For the first time in days, I smiled.
Then Declan entered.
They had identified Patrick Mercer's location.
An underground private medical facility beneath a defunct ski resort.
Patrick Callahan was there too.
Two Patricks.
One dying crime boss.
One murderous uncle.
And everyone wanted Vincent.
We needed police.
Federal authorities.
Vincent resisted.
The files changed his mind.
There were children involved.
Not ours alone.
We turned everything over.
Then a federal agent named Nora Bell arrived.
She reviewed the files.
Her expression became strange when she saw my father's name.
“You're Daniel Mercer's daughter?”
“Yes.”
She closed the folder.
“My father investigated his death.”
“What happened?”
“He disappeared.”
Of course he did.
Nora continued.
“Sixteen years ago.”
The same year my mother moved me out of Montana.
Nora's father had believed Daniel left evidence somewhere Patrick couldn't reach.
“What evidence?”
“A living witness.”
“Who?”
She looked at Vincent.
“Patrick Callahan's wife.”
Eleanor.
But Eleanor was alive.
Nora shook her head.
“Not Eleanor.”
Vincent's face hardened.
“My father only married once.”
“No.”
Nora opened an old marriage certificate.
Patrick Callahan had married another woman at twenty-one.
Marriage annulled six months later.
Name:
Margaret Mercer.
My mother.
I stared at Vincent.
He stared at me.
Then Nora produced a birth record.
A male child.
Born eight months after the annulment.
Name sealed.
Vincent whispered:
“No.”
I understood why.
If Margaret had a son with Patrick Callahan—
May you like
Vincent might not be Eleanor's child.
And the man holding my hand through labor might be far closer to my family than either of us had imagined.
