Chapter 7 - The Brother Who Never Belonged to Them
Anna crouched behind the bathroom door as Dr. Kessler tore the files from Camille’s body.
“Where did you get these?” he demanded.
Camille’s laughter stopped.
“You kept me alive too long.”
Kessler struck her.
Lena gasped.
One orderly grabbed Lena’s arm.
The other searched the room.
Anna looked for an escape.
The bathroom window opened only three inches. The vent was too small. The ceiling tiles appeared loose, but the sink offered no stable surface.
Outside, Kessler said, “Search every room.”
A fire alarm suddenly sounded.
Red lights flashed.
The electronic locks released.
Lena kicked the orderly behind the knee. Camille slammed a metal water pitcher against the second man’s head.
Anna ran from the bathroom.
Smoke drifted from the end of the hall.
Patients poured into the corridor.
“Go!” Lena shouted.
Anna grabbed Camille’s hand.
They disappeared into the crowd.
At the stairwell, Camille stopped.
“I can’t move quickly.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You have no idea how many times Rebecca said that.”
Anna stared at her.
“You knew my mother well?”
“She saved my life.”
“Then come with me.”
They descended three floors and exited through the kitchen.
Outside, rain covered the courtyard.
An ambulance waited beside the loading bay with its doors open.
Lena climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I started the fire alarm,” she said. “The fire itself was Camille’s idea.”
Camille held up a box of matches.
For the first time, she smiled.
They drove to an abandoned church on the edge of Westbridge.
Dr. Reed was waiting inside.
She was in her late fifties, with tired eyes and silver hair pulled into a knot.
When she saw Anna, she pressed both hands over her mouth.
“You look like Rebecca.”
“You knew she was in danger.”
“Yes.”
“You let me grow up without warning me.”
“I tried.”
“No one ever told me anything.”
“Your father refused to believe me. After he died, Sylvia became your legal guardian’s largest donor. Every letter I sent disappeared.”
Anna remembered the expensive private school Sylvia’s foundation had funded after her father’s death.
She had thought it was charity.
It had been surveillance.
Dr. Reed examined the chemical sample from the perfume bottle.
“I’ll need a laboratory,” she said. “But the smell suggests a combination of sedatives, hormone regulators and heavy metals.”
“Could it hurt my baby?”
“Yes.”
Anna closed her eyes.
“Why would they give it to pregnant women?”
Camille answered.
“To create dependence. To weaken memory. To make miscarriages look natural when the child did not meet the standard.”
Dr. Reed placed a hand on Camille’s shoulder.
“Tell her everything.”
Camille sat in the front pew.
“Thirty years ago, Sylvia and Malcolm ran a private fertility program called the Continuity Project. Wealthy families paid them to produce children who matched specific medical, genetic and psychological criteria.”
“That’s impossible,” Anna said.
“They did not create children in laboratories. They selected women. They arranged relationships. They manipulated pregnancies. They stole newborns.”
Anna thought of Aaron.
“Julian was your son.”
Camille nodded.
“Sylvia could not have children. She selected me because of my medical history. Malcolm controlled the pregnancy. After Julian was born, they told me he had died.”
“But he lived.”
“For six years.”
“What happened to him?”
Camille’s face collapsed.
“He began remembering me.”
Anna did not understand.
“Children don’t remember being born.”
“No. But I worked inside the Vale house as a maid. I stayed close to him. Sylvia believed she had removed every trace of me, but Julian always came to me when he was afraid.”
“What did Sylvia do?”
“She increased his medication. He became sick. Then one night he disappeared.”
Aaron had spent his life believing his brother died from illness.
Anna wondered whether that was another lie.
“Why do they want my child?”
Dr. Reed answered.
“Your mother discovered that the compound used in the program caused genetic damage in many of the children. Most became infertile. Some developed neurological illness.”
“Then Aaron…”
“May be unable to father a child naturally.”
Anna stared at her.
“But I’m pregnant.”
May you like
Dr. Reed’s expression darkened.
“That is why we need to determine whose child you are carrying.”
