Chapter 6 - the four hidden heirs
Ruth drove while Elias attempted to locate Lauren Pike through hospital contacts.
The train station’s public cameras showed Lauren entering the main concourse. Five minutes later, she left through a side exit with an unidentified man. She did not appear to be struggling, but her posture was rigid and frightened.
No one knew whether she had escaped, been threatened, or chosen to disappear.
Vivian could think only about the message.
Four embryos.
“What happened to the others?” she asked.
Elias looked up from his phone.
“We need the full laboratory log.”
“The clinic erased it.”
“Nothing is ever completely erased.”
St. Catherine’s old trauma wing had been closed for renovation. Elias used his credentials to enter through a restricted service door.
The corridor beyond it appeared frozen in another decade. Plastic sheets covered the walls. Empty rooms contained disconnected equipment. Construction had stopped months earlier after the hospital board redirected funds.
Elias led Vivian and Ruth to Room 7.
The number made him hesitate.
“What?” Vivian asked.
“This is where Adrian was treated.”
The room had been stripped except for a metal cabinet bolted to the floor. Elias removed the ring from his chain and pressed it into a circular indentation behind the cabinet.
A mechanism released.
The cabinet shifted forward, revealing a narrow staircase.
At the bottom stood a steel door with two scanners.
One required the ring.
The other required a biological sample.
Elias looked at Vivian.
“Adrian said his direct descendant would be able to open it.”
“My son hasn’t been born.”
“Your blood may carry enough fetal material during pregnancy.”
The system contained a small sterile lancet. Vivian pressed her finger against it.
A light scanned the blood.
For ten seconds, nothing happened.
Then the steel door unlocked.
Vivian stared at it.
“That proves the child is Adrian’s.”
“It proves the system recognizes something in your blood,” Elias said. “We still need independent testing.”
The vault beyond the door was smaller than Vivian expected.
Shelves held document boxes, photographs, financial ledgers, and sealed evidence bags. A cassette recorder sat on a desk beside a stack of letters.
On the wall hung a portrait of Adrian Vale.
He resembled Julian, but the differences were unmistakable. Adrian’s expression was direct rather than polished. His eyes carried the same silver crescent Vivian had seen in the hospital photograph.
Beneath the portrait was a handwritten message.
If this door opens, my family has failed to erase me.
Ruth approached a locked drawer.
Elias used the ring again.
Inside were four folders.
Each folder carried a laboratory code.
Embryo A
Embryo B
Embryo C
Embryo D
Vivian felt suddenly dizzy.
Elias helped her into the chair.
Ruth opened the first folder.
A photograph of Vivian was clipped to the inside cover.
Embryo A had been transferred to her.
The second folder contained a different woman’s photograph.
The third and fourth did as well.
All three women appeared to be near Vivian’s age.
“Who are they?” Vivian asked.
Ruth turned over the photographs.
Names and addresses had been written on the back.
Mara Ellison.
Keira Dane.
Sophie Ward.
Elias searched the records.
Each file contained treatment dates from the Vale Reproductive Institute.
Mara’s transfer had occurred two years earlier.
Keira’s eighteen months earlier.
Sophie’s only six weeks before Vivian’s.
“Julian created other pregnancies,” Vivian said.
“We don’t know whether the transfers succeeded,” Elias replied.
Ruth found a payment ledger.
Large monthly amounts had been sent to private accounts under the labels M, K, and S.
“The women were being monitored.”
Vivian opened Embryo A’s folder.
Inside was a copy of her marriage certificate, her medical history, and psychological evaluations she had never completed.
One document described her as emotionally dependent, vulnerable to postpartum instability, and unlikely to challenge her husband’s custody rights.
Her hands went cold.
“They planned to declare me unfit.”
Elias read the attached legal memorandum.
“If Adrian’s direct descendant survived birth, control of his original shares would move into a protected trust. The child’s legal guardian would exercise those voting rights until the heir turned twenty-five.”
“Julian intended to become guardian.”
Ruth pointed to the next paragraph.
“Only if the biological mother was dead, missing, legally incapacitated, or found unfit.”
Vivian stared at the words.
Julian had not simply wanted a child.
He had wanted a key.
And Vivian had been selected because he believed she could be removed.
Elias opened the final evidence box.
Inside was a recent security photograph.
Julian stood outside the cryogenic archive beside Celeste Vale and the director of the reproductive institute.
The date was six months before Vivian’s embryo transfer.
On the back, Helena had written a message despite having died years earlier.
Ruth understood first.
“This isn’t Helena’s handwriting.”
Vivian examined it.
The style was almost perfect, but one letter was wrong. Her mother always crossed the final line of a capital E.
This writer had not.
The message read:
Julian believes the sample belongs to Adrian.
He is wrong.
Elias took the photograph from Vivian.
“If the sample did not belong to Adrian, whose was it?”
A mechanical sound echoed through the staircase.
The steel door had closed.
The lights inside the vault flickered.
A speaker hidden near the ceiling activated.
Julian’s voice filled the room.
“Vivian, I asked you to come home.”
She looked toward the security camera above the door.
“You followed us.”
“I allowed you to lead me here.”
Ruth tried the door.
It would not open.
Julian continued.
“My father searched for this vault until the day he died. Helena made sure he never found it.”
Vivian stood.
“What did you put inside me?”
A long pause followed.
Then Julian laughed softly.
“The same thing every powerful family has always wanted.”
“What?”
“An heir no one could question.”
“You created four.”
“I created options.”
Vivian’s hand moved protectively over her stomach.
“What happened to the other women?”
“One disappeared. One made an unfortunate decision. One is still waiting to become useful.”
Elias looked at the camera.
“You will not touch this child.”
“I don’t need to. The trust activates the moment he takes his first breath.”
Vivian looked at the sealed doors.
“What happens to me?”
Julian’s answer was calm.
May you like
“That depends on whether you finally learn to cooperate.”
Gas began hissing through the ventilation system.
