Chapter 7 - Embryo Number Six
Malcolm Reed’s private journals were discovered in university archives.
Most were clinical.
One entry mentioned Sophie.
March 12.
Sophie accessed old family genetic files without authorization. She now knows about R. She is furious. I told her knowledge will only harm everyone.
Three days later:
Sophie insists on preserving evidence. I refused. She threatened police.
The next day:
She created Embryo 6.
Ethan read the sequence again.
Embryo 6 was evidence.
But of what?
Investigators obtained DNA from Sophie’s archived tissue and compared it to genealogical databases.
A familial match appeared.
A man named Robert Vale.
Sixty-two.
Living in Oregon.
No criminal history.
Retired paramedic.
When contacted, Robert went silent after hearing Sophie Reed’s name.
Then he said:
“I wondered if Malcolm would take that secret to the grave.”
Robert told them he dated Sophie’s mother, Evelyn, when they were teenagers.
Years later, after Evelyn married Malcolm, Robert encountered her again.
One night.
One mistake.
Evelyn became pregnant.
Malcolm believed Sophie was his daughter.
For sixteen years.
Then genetic testing for an unrelated medical issue exposed the truth.
Sophie learned Robert Vale was her biological father.
Ethan frowned.
“That explains Sophie’s secret. Not Embryo 6.”
Robert’s face tightened.
“R-17 was me.”
Silence.
Sophie had asked Robert for a stored sample.
She wanted to create an embryo using her own egg and her biological father’s sperm?
Impossible.
Horrifying.
No.
Robert immediately corrected them.
“I never gave her sperm.”
R-17 was a blood sample.
Not reproductive material.
Someone had relabeled it.
The clinic record had been falsified.
Another reversal.
Embryo 6’s paternal source remained unknown.
Then Robert explained what Sophie had actually intended.
She wanted to preserve DNA from both herself and Robert to prove Malcolm had falsified her parentage records years earlier.
She believed Malcolm had manipulated genetic testing to conceal Evelyn’s affair.
She planned to report him for medical fraud.
But someone used her fertility account to create an embryo without her consent.
The embryo was generated on the same day she confronted Malcolm.
Sophie did not create it.
Her father did.
Why?
No answer.
Until Victoria remembered Malcolm’s obsession.
Inheritance.
The Reed family trust could pass only to Malcolm’s biological descendants.
If Sophie was not biologically his, her future children might lose access to millions.
Unless Sophie had a child fathered by someone who carried Reed DNA.
Ethan understood first.
“Oh God.”
Malcolm had another child.
A son.
Secret.
If he used that son’s genetic material with Sophie’s egg, the resulting child would still carry Malcolm’s bloodline.
But it would also mean Sophie’s child had been genetically engineered around a family trust without her consent.
Victoria looked sick.
“Who was his son?”
Genealogy answered.
A paternal half-brother of Victoria.
Born before Malcolm married Evelyn.
Name:
Thomas Whitmore.
Whitmore.
Maria stared.
“That was Anna’s surname.”
Thomas Whitmore had been Anna’s father.
Which meant Anna had carried an embryo created from her own uncle’s sperm and Sophie’s egg.
And Lily’s gestational mother had unknowingly carried her own first cousin.
The family tree had folded in on itself because Malcolm Reed had treated people like pieces on a legal chessboard.
But Thomas died before Lily was conceived.
Who had access to his stored genetic material?
Margaret Cole.
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And suddenly Ethan’s mother looked less like someone cleaning up Malcolm’s crime—
and more like the person who had finished it.
