The woman on the phone knew my dead husband’s secrets. What she told me next made the Harrington conspiracy far more terrifying than I had imagined. “I’m Thomas Reed’s daughter.” The words floated through the underground archive like smoke. For several seconds, I couldn’t speak. Daniel stood beside me, holding the photograph of Thomas, Evelyn Harrington, and the newborn baby. My hand tightened around the phone. “That’s impossible.” The woman on the other end was crying quietly.
“I know how it sounds.” “My husband had one daughter.” I looked toward the ceiling, as though Chloe were somehow visible through thirty feet of earth and stone. “Chloe.” The woman inhaled shakily. “My name is Natalie Grant. I’m thirty-four.” My heart stumbled. Thirty-four. Older than Chloe. That changed everything. “You’re saying Thomas had a child before he met me?”
“No.” Her answer came immediately. “I’m saying Thomas Reed was not my biological father.” I closed my eyes. “Then why did you say—” “Because he raised me for the first fourteen months of my life.” The archive suddenly felt colder. Daniel whispered, “Put her on speaker.” I did. Natalie continued.
“My mother was named Rebecca Grant. She worked for Harrington Biomedical in the late eighties. Thomas helped her escape.”
I stared at Daniel.
“Harrington Biomedical?”
He nodded slowly.
An old corporate name.
One of the companies that had existed before Northstar.
Natalie went on.
“My mother died when I was sixteen. Before she died, she gave me a sealed envelope and told me to open it only if someone named Samantha Reed ever appeared in the news.”
My throat tightened.
“Why?”
“She said Samantha Reed would mean the Harringtons were finally afraid.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Then Natalie said:
“I saw your name tonight.”
The news.
Garrett’s rescue.
Evelyn’s arrest.
The underground rooms.
My past had become public faster than I had realized.
“What was in the envelope?”
“A key. A photograph. And a letter.”
“What did the letter say?”
Natalie hesitated.
“It said Thomas Reed saved my life.”
My knees weakened.
“He hid my mother and me because the Harringtons wanted me back.”
“Why?”
Natalie began crying harder.
“Because I was one of the first children.”
Daniel’s face changed.
I felt something terrible settle inside my chest.
“One of the first what?”
“The first children created through the Northstar program.”
I sat down.
Daniel went perfectly still.
Natalie continued.
“They weren’t just laundering money.”
My fingers began trembling.
“What were they doing?”
“Selecting bloodlines.”
For a moment, I genuinely thought I had misheard her.
“What?”
“My mother called it reproductive engineering.”
The underground archive suddenly made sense in the worst possible way.
Biological storage.
Fertility records.
Genetic profiles.
Decades of medical identifiers.
I whispered:
“Oh my God.”
Natalie continued.
“The Harringtons believed wealth was meaningless if the family line weakened. They built a private network of clinics to choose pregnancies, manipulate embryos, control inheritance, and preserve genetic material.”
Daniel cursed under his breath.
“That’s insane.”
“No,” Natalie said.
“It’s organized.”
That answer frightened me more.
She explained that Rebecca Grant had been a junior laboratory technician.
At first, she believed the company performed legitimate fertility research.
Then she discovered samples were being collected without meaningful consent.
Employees.
Politicians.
Donors.
Business rivals.
People selected because of intelligence, health, appearance, blood type, or family history.
Northstar wasn’t one experiment.
It was a system.
And somewhere in that system, Thomas Reed had become involved.
Not as a participant.
As a thief.
He stole records.
He hid Rebecca.
He helped Natalie disappear.
And eventually, he went to Daniel.
“He became our confidential source,” Daniel said quietly.
I turned toward him.
“You knew about this?”
“Not all of it.”
His voice was filled with shame.
“We thought Northstar was financial leverage. Blackmail. Illegal medical records. We never understood the reproductive side.”
Natalie said, “Thomas did.”
My heart broke at the sound of his name.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he was afraid.”
“Thomas wasn’t afraid of anything.”
Natalie was silent.
Then she said:
“He was afraid of losing you.”
That hurt more than I expected.
I looked again at the photograph.
Thomas smiling beside Evelyn.
The baby in his arms.
Natalie.
Suddenly, the picture no longer looked like betrayal.
It looked like evidence.
A man pretending to belong somewhere dangerous while trying to rescue a child.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Boston.”
“Come here.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Samantha—”
“I need to see her.”
Natalie agreed.
Before hanging up, she added one more thing.
“There’s another reason I called.”
“What?”
“My mother’s key opens something Thomas left behind.”
My pulse accelerated.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where?”
“The old Harrington railway station.”
Daniel frowned.
“The Harringtons owned a private station?”
“Until 2003.”
Natalie’s voice lowered.
“My mother said Thomas hid the truth somewhere no Harrington would ever look.”
I stood.
“Then we’re going to find it.”
—
Chloe remained stable through the night.
Her neurological recovery shocked the doctors.
She could only speak a few words at a time, but every hour she became more aware.
The baby’s heartbeat remained steady.
When I told her Garrett had been rescued, tears filled her eyes.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“Good.”
That surprised me.
“You still care about him?”
Chloe stared toward the window.
“He failed me.”
Her voice was weak but clear.
“He let his mother humiliate me. Control me. Isolate me.”
I squeezed her hand.
“But?”
“He tried to stop her.”
She swallowed painfully.
“Three days before the attack, Garrett found the clinic records.”
I leaned closer.
“He confronted Evelyn?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She laughed.”
Chloe’s eyes hardened.
“She told him he had never been capable of giving the family what it needed.”
