Chapter 6 - The Original Contract
The original was found inside Whitmore House.
Not in a safe.
Inside a wall.
Robert remembered Miriam remodeling the nursery shortly before the fire.
Investigators removed a baseboard.
Behind it:
a metal tube.
Documents.
Photographs.
One cassette tape.
And the original W-17 transfer agreement.
Miriam's signature was genuine.
So was Thomas's.
And Robert's.
Emma looked at him.
“You signed this.”
Robert stared.
“I've never seen it.”
Yet handwriting experts confirmed it.
His signature.
Dated twenty-seven years earlier.
The contract would transfer W-17 jointly to Miriam, Robert and Thomas.
Why?
The cassette explained.
Miriam's voice.
“We made a mistake.”
Robert closed his eyes.
Hearing her after twenty-six years almost broke him.
“The trust was never about money.”
Emma leaned closer.
W-17 financed experimental fetal medicine.
Miriam had inherited research from her mother.
A technique designed to repair certain congenital conditions before birth.
Early results were extraordinary.
Then a private pharmaceutical group wanted control.
Thomas supported commercialization.
Robert opposed it after learning safety data had been concealed.
Miriam was caught between them.
The three signed a temporary transfer to freeze the research.
Then something happened.
A clinical trial.
A pregnant woman.
An unborn child.
Severe complications.
Miriam stopped everything.
Thomas refused.
Robert threatened him.
The recording ended abruptly.
Emma touched her own seven-month belly.
“What kind of fetal medicine?”
Robert did not know.
Claire searched her mother's files.
Anna Bennett had been a nurse in the W-17 trial.
And she had not merely carried Claire later.
She had been the pregnant patient involved in the final trial.
Everyone stopped.
Dates made no sense.
That pregnancy occurred two years before Claire's birth.
What happened to the child?
Records listed:
FETAL SUBJECT W17-04.
Outcome:
DECEASED.
Mother survived.
Anna lost a baby before carrying Claire.
Thomas had run the procedure.
Miriam tried to stop it.
Robert arrived afterward.
Then Thomas disappeared.
Claire whispered:
“My mother lost a child because of him.”
Maybe.
But the next tape contradicted it.
Anna's voice.
“He saved my baby.”
Claire froze.
The record said dead.
Anna said saved.
“He told Miriam the procedure failed. It didn't.”
Robert's expression hardened.
“Thomas took the child.”
Claire stared.
“My mother had another baby?”
Yes.
A child born twenty-seven years ago.
One year before Emma.
Two years before Claire.
Genetic father unknown.
Anna spent decades searching.
If alive, that child would now be twenty-seven.
Emma whispered:
“Who?”
Then she noticed the date.
May you like
Victor's birthday.
Exactly the same day.
