Chapter 13 - The Daughter She Made Kneel
I read the result three times.
Rebecca Ashford was my mother.
Tyler was my brother.
The woman who watched wine drip down my face had given birth to me.
“How?”
Tyler whispered.
The ledger finally made sense.
Rebecca had delivered twins.
A boy and a girl.
Alexander concealed the girl because she carried the rare genetic marker he wanted for future research.
Rebecca had been told her daughter died.
Tyler remained with her.
I became an anonymous infant inside the research wing.
Then Margaret found me.
“She didn’t know you were Rebecca’s,” Mom explained. “Not then.”
She stole me from the laboratory and fled.
By the time she learned the truth, Rebecca had already participated in destroying evidence against the clinical trial.
“Did Rebecca know later?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before the gala.”
That hurt more than I expected.
Rebecca knew exactly who I was when Tyler poured wine over my head.
She knew when she told me to kneel.
She knew when she stole my wages.
“Why hire me?”
Mom looked horrified.
“You worked there because of Rebecca?”
Apparently.
My application had been routed deliberately.
Rebecca wanted to observe me.
To see whether I knew the truth.
She had watched her own daughter carry trays through her ballroom.
Not out of maternal longing.
Fear.
“She wanted the locket,” Giovanni said.
Exactly.
The job had been bait.
My humiliation was collateral entertainment.
Tyler sat across from me.
His face was gray.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
He swallowed.
“All of it.”
I did not forgive him.
But I believed him.
Then Rebecca contacted us.
Not by phone.
Through her attorney.
She offered complete cooperation in exchange for immunity from charges connected to Alexander’s historic crimes.
Federal prosecutors refused blanket immunity.
Rebecca responded by sending one document.
A current pharmaceutical licensing agreement worth $1.4 billion.
Alexander was not working alone.
A multinational company was preparing to purchase the resurrected Ashford cancer technology.
The sale would occur in seventy-two hours.
If completed, evidence derived from unauthorized research could disappear behind layers of corporate ownership.
Rebecca had the original consent ledger.
Mom had the original genetic dataset.
And I carried the biological marker at the center of the entire patent claim.
Suddenly I was not merely a victim.
I was evidence.
Giovanni looked at me.
“You should disappear until this is finished.”
“No.”
“Hannah.”
“No more hiding me for my own protection.”
He nodded slowly.
“Then what?”
I thought of the ballroom.
Two hundred wealthy people laughing.
Phones raised.
Rebecca ordering me down.
“Rebecca likes audiences.”
Tyler understood first.
His eyes widened.
“You want to confront her publicly?”
“No.”
I stood.
“I want to give her exactly what she wanted that night.”
May you like
“What?”
“Everyone watching.”
