Chapter 8 - The Brother Who Never Died
Vincent Vale was alive.
Seventy-eight.
Living under the name Dr. Adrian Kessler.
The dead scientist whose identity had been used was never a stranger.
He was Victor's identical twin.
Age changed faces.
Surgery changed more.
But old photographs revealed bone structure.
Victor stared at the comparison.
His own eyes looked back.
Vincent had spent forty years building a private genetics program around the Vale family.
Why?
Revenge was part.
Not all.
Vincent had developed early-onset neurological degeneration in his thirties.
The disease progressed unusually slowly.
He believed the Vale line carried both vulnerability and protection.
He wanted to isolate the protective combination.
His descendants became research material.
Sarah.
Emily's reproductive tissue.
Lily.
Claire's baby.
The fake pregnancy had hidden the newest trial.
Victor wanted Vincent found.
Sarah contacted them first.
She appeared at the greenhouse after midnight.
Lily recognized her immediately.
“That's her.”
Sarah resembled Emily because of multiple reconstructive surgeries Vincent forced on her after an accident during captivity.
Not exact.
Enough to haunt Eleanor.
Sarah had spent years inside Vincent's organization.
At first unwillingly.
Later pretending loyalty.
She rescued the infant Claire carried.
“Where is she?”
Sarah looked at Claire.
“Safe.”
Claire stepped forward.
“Where?”
“I can't tell you yet.”
Claire slapped her.
Sarah accepted it.
“You're her mother.”
“I'm her surrogate.”
“You carried her. You searched for her. Call yourself whatever you want. You deserve the truth.”
The baby was genetically related to Lily.
But not as expected.
Claire had carried an embryo created from Sarah's egg.
Paternal donor:
Vincent.
Claire recoiled.
Vincent had created a child using his own daughter.
Sarah's face twisted.
“I didn't consent.”
The horror was not romanticized.
It was laboratory abuse.
Vincent wanted concentrated expression of his genetic traits.
The embryo survived.
Claire carried it.
Sarah spent seven months trying to rescue the child.
She succeeded after birth.
That was why Vincent forced Claire to maintain a fake pregnancy.
He needed time to recover the baby without police knowing a child existed.
But Sarah stole her first.
“Where is she now?”
Sarah looked toward Lily.
“With the only person Vincent won't hurt.”
Victor understood.
“Me.”
Sarah shook her head.
“No.”
Everyone became still.
“Then who?”
Sarah whispered:
“Lily.”
Claire looked at the eight-year-old.
Lily looked confused.
Sarah walked toward the aquarium.
Pressed a hidden control.
A section beneath the floor opened.
Inside was not a laboratory.
A small safe room.
And from within came the cry of an infant.
Lily gasped.
Sarah had hidden the baby beneath Lily's bedroom wing.
For weeks.
Someone had been secretly caring for her.
Lily whispered:
“I heard crying at night.”
Sarah nodded.
“You kept finding the doors.”
Victor stared.
That explained Lily's strange behavior before the ballroom confrontation.
She had not simply discovered Claire's fake belly.
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She had been following a baby's cries.
And someone had been trying desperately to stop her.
