Chapter 13 - Ava
Jack stared at the phone.
“What?”
Marcus spoke calmly.
“Rachel’s egg. Jack’s stored sample.”
Jack had never knowingly stored reproductive material.
Then he remembered a motorcycle accident seventeen years earlier.
Emergency surgery.
A fertility-preservation consent form because doctors warned of possible complications.
He signed dozens of papers while medicated.
Samples were stored.
Later he was told they were destroyed.
Another Warren-controlled medical facility.
Rachel covered her mouth.
Ava might be biologically Rachel and Jack’s daughter.
Born five years before Lily.
That meant Jack potentially had two daughters.
Neither raised by him.
Marcus raised Ava as his own.
Why?
Jonathan shouted:
“You used your brother’s child?”
Marcus replied:
“I raised her.”
Possession again.
Not explanation.
Marcus had wanted a child but discovered he was infertile.
Rather than accept donor conception transparently, he secretly selected genetic material from Jack.
Why Jack?
Close family genetics.
Ava would resemble the Warrens.
Trust-compatible lineage.
No outsider DNA.
Rachel’s egg was chosen because Marcus already knew her through Meridian and admired her.
He turned two people into biological suppliers without consent.
Jack’s rage became almost physical.
Rachel touched his arm.
“Not in front of Lily.”
He stopped.
That mattered.
Then Marcus said:
“Ava is my daughter.”
Rachel answered:
“She may love you as her father.”
Marcus went silent.
“But what you did to create her was wrong.”
He hung up.
Independent genetic testing later became possible only with appropriate consent and legal safeguards.
Ava was fourteen.
Old enough to have a voice.
Before any testing, a child psychologist and attorney met with her.
Marcus’s wife, Caroline Warren, was devastated too.
She believed an anonymous donor egg and Marcus’s sperm created Ava.
She carried the pregnancy.
She was Ava’s gestational and legal mother.
The truth did not erase her motherhood.
When Ava finally agreed to meet Rachel, she did not run into her arms.
Good.
Real life shouldn’t demand that.
They met in a quiet office.
Ava stared at Rachel.
“You look like me.”
Rachel cried.
“So do you.”
“Are you my mom?”
Rachel answered carefully.
“Caroline is your mom. I may be your biological mother. Those can both be true.”
Ava nodded.
Then looked at Jack.
“Are you my biological father?”
“Maybe. Testing will tell us.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Would you have wanted me?”
Jack’s face broke.
“Yes.”
Ava began crying.
Not because she suddenly loved him.
Because she had spent years believing Marcus deliberately chose her through a donor program.
Now she learned much of that story was false.
Testing confirmed it.
Rachel and Jack were Ava’s biological parents.
Caroline remained the woman who carried and raised her.
Marcus was not biologically related as father, but he had raised Ava for fourteen years.
Then another problem emerged.
Ava had a trust account worth $22 million.
Created at birth.
Funded through Meridian.
Why so much?
Jonathan recognized the account number.
It wasn’t an inheritance.
It was hush money.
Paid by David Hale.
Jack whispered:
“For what?”
Ava looked terrified.
Nobody knew.
Then Caroline remembered a locked box Marcus kept in his study.
Inside, police found photographs.
One showed Rachel.
Pregnant with Lily.
Taken from a distance.
Another showed Jack outside his repair shop.
Another showed Ava at age five.
And behind Ava stood a woman no one expected.
Diane Cole.
May you like
Jack and Marianne’s mother.
The woman who supposedly died twenty-five years ago.
