Chapter 15 - The Son They Needed
The coordinates led beneath Vesper Row.
My nightclub.
Of course they did.
The place where Brin and I met.
The apartment where I left her.
The building I believed belonged entirely to me.
It had belonged to Patrick first.
Before him, Adrian.
And beneath it existed a room I had never known about.
We arrived with federal agents.
Brin came despite every doctor telling her not to.
She looked barely able to stand.
I tried once.
“Stay in the car.”
She stared at me.
I opened the door for her.
Progress.
The hidden entrance was behind the private elevator.
Brin recognized the code panel.
“That’s why Malcolm gave me your old elevator code.”
The brass key opened it.
Below us stretched a concrete corridor.
At its end:
Malcolm Reeve.
Holding my son.
Gently.
That confused me.
The baby wasn’t crying.
Malcolm looked exhausted rather than triumphant.
“Give him to Brin.”
He did.
Immediately.
Brin grabbed our child and backed away.
I nearly crossed the room to kill Malcolm anyway.
Then he raised both hands.
“I didn’t take him to hurt him.”
“You threatened Brin.”
“No.”
“We have video.”
“You have my voice.”
I stopped.
“What does that mean?”
“The man in the garage used a voice synthesizer.”
Royce looked at me.
Possible.
Malcolm continued.
“I was following Brin because Adrian ordered me to protect her.”
Adrian stepped forward.
“I never told you she was pregnant.”
“No.”
Malcolm looked at him.
“Patrick did.”
Silence.
Patrick had been dead seventeen years.
Malcolm reached toward a console.
Agents aimed weapons.
“Easy.”
He pressed one button.
A prerecorded video appeared.
Patrick.
Again.
But much younger.
Beside him stood Catherine.
And Brin’s mother was visibly pregnant.
“If you’re seeing this,” Patrick said, “then Cormack and Brin have had a child.”
Brin stared at the screen.
“How could they know?”
Catherine answered.
“They don’t have to.”
The recording wasn’t prophecy.
It described a contingency.
If Brin ever had a child with the man legally recognized as Patrick’s son, that child would unite two trust structures.
Not biologically.
Legally.
Our son had become the beneficiary of assets belonging to both Catherine Holloway and Patrick Hale.
But the fortune wasn’t the point.
The combined trust controlled the final encryption key for the evidence archive.
Malcolm had removed our son because someone inside the hospital was attempting to use his device remotely to unlock it.
“Who?”
Malcolm looked toward Yara.
She had arrived behind the agents.
Yara stopped.
“Don’t look at me.”
“I’m not.”
Malcolm pointed behind her.
Dr. Nolan Pierce stood in the corridor.
Everything changed.
Pierce ran.
Royce tackled him before he reached the stairs.
Federal agents restrained him.
Pierce screamed:
“You have no idea what’s in that archive!”
Brin held our son tighter.
“You implanted the device.”
Pierce laughed.
“Because Catherine designed the system around blood authentication. I needed the child.”
“Needed him for what?”
“To prove who owns Lakefront.”
Elias stepped closer.
“Catherine owned it.”
“No.”
Pierce looked directly at Brin.
“Your mother stole it.”
Brin’s face changed.
Pierce continued.
“Ask Elias who founded Lakefront.”
Everyone looked at Vane.
He said nothing.
“Elias?”
Brin’s voice broke.
Finally he answered.
“Your grandmother.”
Brin froze.
“Which grandmother?”
That was the wrong question.
Elias looked toward Adrian.
Adrian looked suddenly sick.
My mother, Victoria, slowly sat down.
I noticed.
“Mom?”
She wouldn’t look at me.
Brin noticed too.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Victoria began crying.
“Catherine wasn’t your biological mother.”
Brin stopped breathing.
“No.”
“She raised you.”
“No.”
“Brin—”
“Who was my mother?”
Victoria looked at me.
Not Brin.
Me.
And I knew I was about to hate the answer.
“Victoria.”
Adrian warned her.
She ignored him.
“Brin’s biological mother was my sister.”
Brin stared.
“Who?”
“Elizabeth.”
The name meant nothing to Brin.
It meant everything to me.
Elizabeth Vale.
Adrian’s younger sister.
The woman whose disappearance had started the Vale-Hale war decades earlier.
Adrian looked at Brin as if seeing a ghost.
“My sister had a daughter?”
Victoria nodded.
“With Patrick.”
Brin closed her eyes.
Patrick Hale was still her father.
But her mother connected her directly to the Vale dynasty.
Our son didn’t unite two families.
He united three.
Hale.
Holloway.
Vale.
Pierce laughed from the floor.
“You finally understand.”
“No,” I said.
“I understand why everyone wanted him.”
Pierce shook his head.
“You still think this is inheritance.”
He looked at my son.
“The trust doesn’t give that child money.”
“What does it give him?”
“Ownership.”
“Of Lakefront?”
“Of everything.”
Adrian went still.
Pierce smiled.
“Vesper Row. Lakefront. Vale International’s American holdings. Patrick’s legitimate companies. Catherine’s patents.”
Royce stared at him.
“How much?”
“Almost two billion.”
Brin looked horrified rather than impressed.
Good.
Pierce continued:
“And whoever controls the child until adulthood effectively controls the trust.”
There it was.
Not kidnapping.
Corporate conquest.
I looked at Brin.
Nine months ago, I had abandoned her because I thought distance would protect her from my world.
Instead, I had left her alone inside a war she understood better than I did.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at me.
“Not now.”
Fair.
Federal agents removed Pierce.
Malcolm surrendered.
Adrian remained.
So did Victoria.
Yara stood alone near the stairs, stripped of every identity she had trusted.
Brin placed our son into my arms.
I almost refused.
“I don’t know how.”
“Neither does he.”
The baby opened his eyes.
Tiny.
Completely unaware that adults had spent decades building lies around his birth.
“What do we call him?” I whispered.
Brin smiled faintly.
“I already named him.”
Of course she had.
“What?”
“Patrick.”
Everyone became silent.
I looked at her.
“After your father?”
“No.”
She touched our son’s cheek.
“After the man who spent his life making terrible choices because he thought controlling people was the same thing as protecting them.”
She looked directly at me.
“Consider it a warning.”
I laughed for the first time in what felt like years.
Then Malcolm spoke behind us.
“Brin.”
She turned.
“There’s one more file.”
Of course there was.
Malcolm handed her a sealed envelope.
This one wasn’t addressed to me.
It read:
For Brin Holloway, after Cormack learns the child is his.
Brin opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
Her face changed.
“What?”
She handed it to me.
The photograph showed Catherine Holloway inside a hospital room eighteen years earlier.
Beside her stood Patrick Hale.
And between them was a teenage boy.
Royce leaned closer.
“Who’s that?”
I knew.
So did Adrian.
The boy was Malcolm Reeve.
But the date made no sense.
Malcolm should have been nearly thirty when the photograph was taken.
Yet the teenager had his exact face.
I looked at him.
“Who is this?”
Malcolm didn’t answer.
Adrian grabbed the photograph.
On the back, Catherine had written one sentence:
If Cormack and Brin ever have a child, Malcolm must never be allowed near him.
Every agent in the room turned toward Malcolm.
Brin grabbed Patrick from my arms.
Malcolm’s face drained.
“That isn’t what you think.”
I stepped between him and my family.
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t.”
“Wrong answer.”
Suddenly the hidden room locked.
Steel shutters dropped across both exits.
Red emergency lights flooded the corridor.
Malcolm stared toward the ceiling.
Not surprised.
Terrified.
A speaker crackled.
Then a woman’s voice filled the room.
“Hello, Cormack.”
My mother went completely pale.
Adrian whispered:
“No.”
I looked at him.
“Who is that?”
The woman laughed softly.
“Ask Malcolm why he hasn’t aged in eighteen years.”
Everyone turned toward him.
Malcolm backed against the wall.
Brin whispered:
“What the hell is happening?”
Then the final monitor switched on.
A live camera feed appeared.
An elegant silver-haired woman sat inside an unknown office.
She held another photograph of Brin’s newborn son.
Beside her was a thick file stamped with Lakefront’s original seal.
She smiled directly into the camera.
“Congratulations, Brin.”
Pause.
“You delivered exactly the child we designed the program to produce.”
Brin’s face went completely white.
I stepped toward the monitor.
“What program?”
The woman leaned forward.
“Ask your mother.”
I turned.
Victoria was crying.
“Mom?”
She shook her head.
“I thought they destroyed it.”
“Destroyed what?”
Before she could answer, the woman on the monitor smiled.
“Project Heir.”
May you like
The screen went black.
And in the sudden silence, my son began to cry.
