Chapter 7 - Why Mark Chose Me
Mark stopped pretending when I showed him the ledger.
He sat across from me at the kitchen table while Lily slept in a bassinet between us.
“I was paid.”
My chest tightened.
“For what?”
“To find you.”
The words were worse because he said them quietly.
“Your mother had been searching for the Hale heir for years. Your father’s trust was becoming a problem because lenders were asking questions about ownership.”
“So you tracked me down.”
“Yes.”
“And pretended to meet me accidentally.”
“Yes.”
Evelyn stood behind me, silent with fury.
“How much of our marriage was fake?”
“Not the marriage.”
“Don’t.”
“I took the money, Rachel. I contacted you. I lied about why. Those things are true.”
“And Lily?”
His eyes filled with something I hadn’t seen in days.
Fear.
“I wanted her.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No. I never tampered with anything. I never forced the pregnancy. I never planned a date.”
I wanted to believe him.
Then I remembered the fertility clinic.
“Who recommended Dr. Mercer?”
Mark froze.
That was enough.
He had claimed a coworker recommended the clinic.
Now he admitted Denise had.
Samantha immediately subpoenaed what she could through emergency proceedings tied to the fraud case.
By afternoon, we discovered something strange.
The clinic had received payments from North Star Hospitality.
Not for our treatment.
For “consulting.”
One payment had been made the week I became pregnant.
I felt physically sick.
But the records didn’t prove what I feared.
They pointed somewhere stranger.
Dr. Mercer had also treated Denise twenty-seven years earlier.
And Evelyn.
Mom stared at the report.
“I have never been his patient.”
Yet her name appeared in archived billing records.
Then Samantha found the attached code.
It wasn’t fertility treatment.
It was genetic screening.
My mother had apparently been tested without remembering it.
“Why would Denise need Evelyn’s genetic information?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
That evening, Tyler finally arrived.
He carried a backpack containing three stolen binders.
He set them on Samantha’s conference table.
“You want to know why Mom cared about Rachel having a baby?”
“Yes.”
He pushed one binder toward me.
“Because the trust wasn’t the only thing activated by Lily’s birth.”
Inside was a life-insurance policy on my father.
Twenty million dollars.
The beneficiary wasn’t my mother.
It wasn’t me.
May you like
It was North Star Hospitality.
And the policy had been increased six weeks before Dad died.
