Chapter 13 - The Child Adrian Never Told Her About
Adrian’s silence lasted only two seconds.
It felt like betrayal measured in years.
“Mara, continue the song.”
“What third child?”
Celeste turned toward him.
“You never told her?”
Adrian’s face hardened.
“This is not the time.”
“It became the time when the archive showed me his face.”
The transfer timer began falling again.
Celeste looked delighted by Adrian’s discomfort.
“Tell her, Adrian. Tell your resurrected wife why Project Orpheus contains the memories of a boy who looks like your sons.”
Adrian released a breath.
“His name was Julian.”
“Was?”
“My son.”
Mara felt the words cut through every restored memory.
“With whom?”
“Before I met you.”
Celeste answered.
“My cousin.”
Adrian looked at her with hatred.
“Do not bring Isabelle into this.”
Mara’s voice shook.
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared when he was five. Isabelle died six months later.”
“You told me you had no children before the twins.”
“I believed Julian was not mine until after Isabelle died. A letter arrived with the DNA results.”
“And you never told Lillian?”
“I intended to. Then the threats against the foundation began. The plane crashed before I could.”
Celeste moved toward the console.
“My father took Julian.”
Adrian stared at her.
“What?”
“Gideon believed your bloodline enhanced neurological resilience. Julian became the first child to survive a full identity transplant.”
Mara’s stomach turned.
“Whose identity?”
Celeste’s smile vanished.
“No one knows.”
On the memory corridor, the older boy stood behind Gideon.
His eyes were empty.
Mara began singing again.
The transfer resumed.
Gideon’s image flickered.
“You think returning memories will restore justice,” he said. “But memory is not truth. Memory is interpretation.”
Mara moved past him.
Behind the final door, she found a vast chamber filled with lights.
Each light represented a stored identity.
She touched one.
A nurse remembered Marcus carrying Lillian into the clinic.
She touched another.
Jonas remembered replacing Lillian’s dental records with material from another patient.
She touched another.
Celeste remembered ordering the plane sabotage.
Then Mara touched Julian’s pattern.
The memory struck with crushing force.
Julian woke in a laboratory.
Gideon stood beside him.
A woman watched through the glass.
The woman was Elena Rook, Mara’s mother.
“You said the boy would not be harmed,” Elena told Gideon.
“He is not harmed. He is becoming useful.”
“He’s five years old.”
“He is a bridge between two ideal neurological lines.”
Julian looked at Elena.
“Aunt Elena?”
Mara’s heart stopped.
Julian had known her mother.
The memory changed.
Elena smuggled Julian out of the laboratory during the fire that supposedly killed her.
She placed him in a vehicle with another child.
Fourteen-year-old Mara.
Before they escaped, Gideon’s men surrounded them.
Elena was shot.
Mara was taken back.
Julian disappeared.
But one final fragment remained.
A recent image.
Marcus meeting a young man at a train station less than a year earlier.
The young man was Julian, now in his twenties.
Alive.
Marcus gave him a photograph of Adrian and the twins.
Julian said, “Does he know I survived?”
Marcus answered, “Not yet.”
The archive transfer reached 100 percent.
Mara screamed as thousands of memories passed through her.
The machines exploded.
The room filled with smoke.
Adrian tore the restraints apart and carried her from the chair.
Noah woke crying.
At the hospital, Ethan’s neural activity returned to normal.
Celeste attempted to escape but Detective Brooks arrested her at the facility entrance.
Marcus vanished during the evacuation.
Again.
Mara lost consciousness in Adrian’s arms.
When she woke two days later, he sat beside her bed.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
She studied his face.
She remembered the ballroom.
The wedding.
The twins.
The night he first told her about the Hawthorne foundation.
She also remembered Mara Bell’s years hiding with Jonas.
Both lives existed inside her.
“You are Adrian.”
Relief broke across his face.
She continued.
“And you lied to me about Julian.”
The relief disappeared.
“I did.”
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“I saw him in the archive.”
“How recent?”
“Within the last year.”
Adrian stood.
“Then we find him.”
Before Mara could answer, Detective Brooks entered.
“Celeste is asking to speak with you.”
“I have nothing to say to her.”
“She says Julian contacted her attorney.”
Adrian and Mara exchanged a look.
“What did he want?” Adrian asked.
Brooks placed an envelope on the bed.
“He wanted this delivered to Lillian.”
Mara opened it.
Inside was a recent photograph of the twins sleeping in Adrian’s hospital room.
Someone had taken it the previous night.
May you like
On the back was a message.
DEAR SISTER, YOU REMEMBERED THE WRONG VERSION.
