“My blood. Stem cells. Bone marrow. Whatever you need.” “We don’t know if you’re compatible yet.” “You will.” “That’s not how this works.” Clara stepped closer. “She has the same mutation I do.” Everyone froze. Yates stared at her. “What mutation?” Clara looked at me. “The one Genevieve found.” My skin went cold. Yates pulled her records from the counter. “What are you saying?” “I carry a rare genetic variant. It increases the chance of marrow failure under certain conditions.” Yates’s eyes widened. “You knew?”
“I didn’t know the twins inherited it until Genevieve contacted me.” I grabbed her shoulder. “You knew my children could get sick?” “She didn’t tell me where you lived. She was afraid someone was watching her.” “WHO?” “I DON’T KNOW!” Her voice broke. For the first time, she looked terrified. “I spent two years trying to reach you.” Dr. Yates interrupted. “Her initial typing is back.” He stared at the screen. My heart stopped. “Well?” He looked at Clara. Then at me. “She’s an extraordinary match.” “How extraordinary?” “Close enough that I want full confirmation immediately.” Hope entered the room so violently it hurt. “Can she save Blythe?” Yates hesitated. “Possibly.” That one word nearly dropped me to my knees.
Possibly.
An hour earlier, there had been nothing.
Now there was possibly.
Blythe stabilized after emergency treatment.
Jonah eventually fell asleep against my chest.
Clara stood near the doorway, watching them.
There was something unbearable in her expression.
Not curiosity.
Recognition.
Love.
That frightened me more than anger would have.
“Don’t look at them like that,” I said quietly.
She flinched.
“Like what?”
“Like they belong to you.”
Her eyes lowered.
“I know they don’t.”
I regretted the words almost immediately.
But grief makes selfish men cruel.
And I had never been good at being anything else.
She turned to leave.
“Clara.”
She stopped.
I forced the question out.
“Did you ever see them after they were born?”
“No.”
“Never?”
She shook her head.
“Genevieve sent me one photograph.”
Her voice cracked.
“Then she asked me to disappear.”
I looked at Blythe.
Genevieve had loved them.
Whatever she had done, she had loved them.
That much I knew.
By nightfall, the mansion was locked down.
The captured attackers were being questioned below the east garage.
Prescott personally checked every camera record from the previous forty-eight hours.
I stayed beside the twins.
Clara was given a room near the medical wing under guard.
At eleven thirty, Yates found me.
“We confirmed it.”
I stood.
“She matches both.”
Relief hit so hard I had to grip the chair.
“When do we start?”
“There’s a complication.”
Of course there was.
“There’s always a complication.”
“The genetic variant Clara mentioned is real.”
“So?”
“It means the twins’ condition may not be naturally progressing the way we thought.”
I stared at him.
“Explain.”
Yates closed the door.
“Certain substances can trigger catastrophic marrow suppression in people with this mutation.”
“What substances?”
He named several.
One caught my attention.
A medication.
A common immune-modulating compound sometimes used in experimental treatment protocols.
“We never gave them that.”
“No.”
“But someone may have.”
The room suddenly felt cold.
“What are you saying?”
“I reviewed their toxicology history.”
“And?”
“There are traces.”
My hand slowly curled into a fist.
“How long?”
“Repeated exposure. Possibly months.”
My voice barely worked.
“You’re telling me somebody has been poisoning my children?”
Yates chose his words carefully.
“I’m telling you their decline may have been accelerated intentionally.”
I left before rage could make me destroy the room.
Prescott met me in the corridor.
I told him everything.
His face changed.
Not shock.
Guilt.
I noticed.
“What?”
“Lawson…”
“What?”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you.”
My stomach dropped.
He looked toward the twins’ room.
“Three months ago, we found a security irregularity in the medical supply deliveries.”
“And?”
“I investigated.”
“And?”
“The paperwork traced back to an internal authorization.”
“Whose?”
Prescott didn’t answer fast enough.
I stepped closer.
“Whose name?”
“Mine.”
Silence.
He shook his head.
“I never signed it.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I’m telling you someone cloned my credentials.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
My hand was already around his collar before I realized it.
Prescott had been with me eighteen years.
He had taken a bullet meant for me in Detroit.
He had carried Jonah to an ambulance after a playground accident.
He had stood beside Genevieve’s coffin.
Yet now every memory became evidence against him.
“Were you intercepting Clara’s letters?”
“No.”
“Did you know about the medication?”
“No.”
“Did you help kill Genevieve?”
His face went white.
“Lawson.”
“Answer me.”
“No.”
He didn’t struggle.
That made it worse.
“I loved her too.”
I released him.
“Find out who used your credentials.”
“I will.”
“And until then, you stay away from my children.”
Pain flickered across his face.
But he nodded.
At two in the morning, I finally opened Genevieve’s entire letter.
I had only read the first lines earlier.
Now I sat alone beside Blythe and continued.
Lawson,
If Clara is standing in front of you, then I failed to keep this buried.
Before you hate me, understand one thing: I never lied because I wanted to take something from you.
I lied because I was afraid.
Clara gave us the greatest gift of my life.
But months after the twins were born, I discovered someone had accessed the fertility clinic records.
Someone knew Clara was their biological mother.
Someone also knew about the mutation.
I believed they intended to use the children against you.
I tried to find out who.
I made a mistake.
I trusted someone inside the house.
If anything happens to me, do not trust the obvious enemy.
Crosby Vane is dangerous, but he is not the person I fear most.
The person I fear is someone you call family.
I stopped reading.
Family.
I had almost none left.
My parents were dead.
Genevieve was gone.
The twins were everything.
Except one person.
My younger brother.
Elliot Mercer.
The harmless one.
The brother who had avoided the family business.
The uncle who visited Jonah and Blythe every Sunday.
The man currently sleeping in the guest wing.
I stood so quickly the letter fell from my hands.
I called security.
No answer.
I called again.
Nothing.
Then every light in the medical wing went dark.
Blythe’s monitor switched to battery power.
Jonah woke instantly.
“Dad?”
I drew my gun.
“Stay with your sister.”
A shadow moved outside the glass.
I aimed.
The door opened.
Clara stepped inside.
“Lawson?”
“Get down.”
She dropped beside the bed.
Emergency lights flickered red.
My phone buzzed.
A message.
Unknown number.
COME TO THE WEST CONSERVATORY ALONE.
OR YOUR BROTHER DIES.
Attached was a photograph.
Elliot sat tied to a chair.
Blood ran from his temple.
Behind him stood Crosby Vane.
I stared at the screen.
Genevieve had warned me not to trust the obvious enemy.
Yet the obvious enemy was holding my brother hostage.
Maybe Elliot wasn’t the traitor.
Maybe someone wanted me to believe he was.
I turned to Clara.
“Lock this door.”
“Where are you going?”
“To end this.”
I found Prescott outside the stairwell despite my order.
“You’re supposed to stay away.”
“You can shoot me later.”
He held up a tablet.
“I found who accessed the medical supply system.”
My pulse jumped.
“Who?”
He handed me the screen.
The authorization logs showed Prescott’s credentials.
But the biometric security camera had captured a face.
Not Elliot.
Not Crosby.
Not any guard.
Dr. Franklin Yates.
For a moment, I simply stared.
“No.”
Prescott’s voice was grim.
“He’s been modifying the twins’ treatment records for months.”
I turned toward the medical suite.
Yates was gone.
I ran.
The twins’ room door was open.
Clara stood inside.
Alone.
My children were missing.
“Where are they?”
She was crying.
“He said you sent him.”
“WHO?”
“Dr. Yates.”
The world turned red.
We searched the wing.
Nothing.
Then the speaker system crackled.
Yates’s voice filled the mansion.
“Lawson, if you’re hearing this, don’t follow me.”
I looked toward the security monitor.
A vehicle was moving beneath the estate through an old service tunnel.
A tunnel only four people knew existed.
Me.
Prescott.
Genevieve.
And my brother.
Then Yates said something that changed everything.
“You’ve spent six years raising children who were never supposed to survive their first birthday.”
My blood froze.
“The leukemia was never the plan. Their illness is the consequence of someone trying to correct an old mistake.”
“Yates!” I shouted at the speaker.
His voice continued calmly.
“Ask Clara what happened at St. Vincent’s fertility laboratory six years ago.”
I turned.
Clara went completely pale.
“What is he talking about?”
She backed away.
“Lawson…”
“What happened?”
Her eyes filled with terror.
“The embryos Genevieve carried…”
She could barely speak.
“What about them?”
“There were supposed to be two.”
My mouth went dry.
“There were two.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“There were three.”
Silence swallowed the room.
I stared at her.
“Where is the third child?”
Clara began crying.
“I thought the embryo didn’t survive.”
Then Prescott’s tablet chimed.
A new image appeared from one of the tunnel cameras.
Yates was driving.
Jonah and Blythe lay in the back seat.
But someone else sat beside him.
A small boy.
About six years old.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
My eyes.
The resemblance was unmistakable.
And around his neck hung a silver pendant Genevieve had worn every day until the morning she died.
Clara covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
The boy turned toward the camera.
Then the feed went black.
I stood frozen in the red emergency light, realizing the truth was far worse than anything Genevieve had written.
Somewhere beneath my home, my dying twins were being taken away by the doctor I had trusted with their lives.
And beside him sat a third child carrying Mercer blood.
A child I had never known existed.
A child someone had hidden for six years.
And suddenly I understood why Crosby Vane had come to my gates.
He wasn’t trying to get in.
He had been trying to stop someone from getting out.
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