Chapter 3 - THE CHILDREN THEY ERASED
Roman had heard men beg for their lives without feeling anything.
He had ordered businesses shut down with one sentence.
He had watched enemies lie while knowing precisely how much pressure would make the truth emerge.
None of that prepared him for four words.
She was carrying your children.
He looked at Emma.
She looked as stunned as he felt.
“That’s not possible,” she whispered.
Celeste nodded slowly.
“It is.”
Emma shook her head.
“No. I’ve never been pregnant.”
Celeste’s face broke.
“You were.”
The hospital corridor seemed to shrink around them.
Roman glanced toward Caleb’s room.
His son was awake, kicking beneath a thin blanket, unaware that the adults outside were rewriting the story of his existence.
Roman turned back to Celeste.
“You have sixty seconds before I stop treating you like my sister.”
“Roman—”
“Fifty-nine.”
Victor stepped between them.
“Not here.”
Roman stared at him.
Victor pointed toward a staff stairwell.
“Cameras are coming back online.”
Emma checked Caleb.
“He can’t be moved without medical authorization.”
Roman looked at her.
“Can he safely be moved?”
“Not out of the hospital.”
“Then we stay close.”
Emma called a nurse she trusted, quietly arranged continuous observation, and warned her that Caleb’s bottle had been contaminated.
Roman stationed Marco outside the room.
Marco had finally returned after the blackout, visibly furious that his radios had been jammed.
Roman studied him.
Three years ago, Marco had access to Roman’s private phone.
That fact remained filed away.
Nobody was above suspicion anymore.
They entered a private consultation room twenty yards from Caleb.
Roman locked the door.
Celeste sat.
Victor remained standing.
Emma leaned against a counter as if her legs could no longer be trusted.
Roman stayed in front of Celeste.
“Talk.”
Celeste looked at Emma.
“I didn’t know everything.”
“Start with what you did know,” Emma said.
Three years earlier, Celeste explained, Thomas Vale had called her just after midnight.
He said Emma had been attacked.
He claimed the people responsible were connected to an illegal medical network and believed Emma possessed documents that could destroy them.
“Dad said Roman couldn’t know,” Celeste whispered.
Roman laughed once.
Cold.
“You thought hiding my fiancée from me was reasonable?”
“No. I thought you’d start a war.”
“I would have.”
“That was exactly what he was afraid of.”
Emma folded her arms tightly.
“The psychiatric facility?”
Celeste looked ashamed.
“A private clinic in New Hampshire. Thomas said using a false psychiatric transfer was the only way to move you without alerting whoever was watching hospitals and airports.”
“Why did you sign?”
“Because he couldn’t.”
Roman frowned.
“Why?”
“His name was being monitored.”
Victor nodded.
“That part is true.”
Roman turned on him.
“You knew?”
“Not then.”
Celeste continued.
“They sedated Emma.”
Emma’s face whitened.
“I remember waking in a room.”
Celeste looked at her.
“You were there eleven days.”
Emma pressed fingers against her temple.
Fragments were returning.
A white ceiling.
A woman saying, Don’t fight the medicine.
Someone calling her Emily.
Vomiting.
Abdominal pain.
Then nothing.
Emma whispered, “I thought it was from the head injury.”
Celeste began crying again.
“No.”
Roman already knew he hated the next answer.
“What happened?”
“Dad had blood tests done after the attack. Emma was pregnant.”
Roman didn’t move.
“How far?”
“About seven weeks.”
Emma covered her mouth.
Roman looked away.
Three years ago.
Seven weeks pregnant.
Yet Caleb was six months old.
The math made no sense.
Unless—
Emma said it first.
“Embryos.”
Celeste nodded.
“They told us the pregnancy wouldn’t continue safely.”
“What do you mean, told you?” Emma demanded. “Who?”
“A doctor named Leonard Shaw.”
Emma’s expression sharpened.
“I know that name.”
Victor said, “Vale Fertility Institute.”
Roman stared.
A company he thought had been sold years earlier.
Victor continued.
“Shaw worked with Thomas.”
Celeste wiped her face.
“Emma had complications after the attack. Dad said they needed to terminate the pregnancy.”
Emma flinched.
Roman’s voice became deadly.
“And you agreed?”
“No.”
Celeste looked at Emma.
“I begged them to wait.”
Roman stepped closer.
“What did they do?”
Celeste shook her head.
“I don’t know exactly. I was told the pregnancy was lost.”
Emma’s breathing grew shallow.
“Then how do Caleb and Lucy exist?”
Victor answered.
“They harvested embryonic tissue.”
Silence.
Emma stared at him.
“That’s medically…”
“Possible under specific circumstances,” Emma finished herself, her doctor’s mind fighting through horror. “But not without consent. Not legally.”
Victor’s face hardened.
“Nothing about this was legal.”
Roman looked at Caleb through the window in the consultation room door.
His son.
His biological son.
Not the product of anonymous surrogacy.
His and Emma’s child.
If Victor was telling the truth.
Roman turned back.
“Proof.”
Victor removed a flash drive.
Emma almost laughed from disbelief.
“That’s what everyone keeps getting killed over.”
“This is a copy Katherine made.”
Roman took it.
“We need a computer disconnected from the hospital network.”
Emma led them to an old administrative workstation in a medication education room.
Victor disconnected the Ethernet cable.
Roman inserted the drive.
Folders appeared.
Names.
Dates.
Patient numbers.
Emma searched hers.
CARTER, EMMA J.
She stopped breathing.
Roman opened it.
A fertility chart appeared.
Blood work.
Ultrasounds.
Procedure notes.
Then a document:
Pregnancy termination secondary to traumatic complications. Embryonic preservation authorized.
Emma scrolled to the authorization.
The signature looked like hers.
“It’s fake.”
Roman knew her handwriting.
She was right.
The next page contained genetic testing.
Two viable embryos had been preserved.
One male.
One female.
Roman stared at the screen.
Caleb.
Lucy.
Emma sat hard in the chair.
“They kept them for three years.”
Victor nodded.
“Until someone decided to implant both into a carrier.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
Roman opened the birth file.
The gestational carrier was listed as:
KATHERINE CARTER.
Emma stood so quickly the chair rolled backward.
“No.”
Celeste gasped.
Roman read it again.
Emma’s sister.
Katherine had carried Roman and Emma’s twins.
Emma gripped the desk.
“That photograph…”
The unconscious woman.
Her bracelet.
“I gave Katherine my compass bracelet when we were teenagers,” Emma whispered. “Before we were separated. I told her it meant she could always find me.”
Victor nodded.
“She wore it for twenty years.”
Roman looked at the baby photograph again.
Katherine had given matching compass charms to Caleb and Lucy.
“Where is she?”
Victor’s silence answered.
Emma turned.
“Where is my sister?”
“I haven’t heard from her in eleven days.”
Emma’s face collapsed.
Victor continued quickly.
“But that doesn’t mean she’s dead.”
Roman saw the next folder.
TRANSFER—INFANT FEMALE.
He opened it.
Lucy Carter Vale.
Born six minutes after Caleb.
Healthy.
Transferred after forty-eight hours.
Destination field:
Hawthorne House Pediatric Foundation.
Emma whispered, “That place closed five years ago.”
Victor said, “Publicly.”
Roman searched his memory.
Hawthorne House was an old private estate north of Boston.
His father had hosted charity dinners there.
Roman remembered dark wood, landscaped gardens and adults speaking softly behind closed doors.
He also remembered a locked east wing.
Emma searched the file.
“There’s no discharge record.”
“There wouldn’t be,” Victor said.
Roman copied everything to his phone.
Then noticed another file.
Restricted.
Password protected.
File name:
RVALE_FINAL
He tried his birthday.
Wrong.
His mother’s birthday.
Wrong.
Emma said, “Your father liked codes.”
Victor frowned.
“He liked control.”
Celeste whispered, “Try Lenora.”
Roman looked at her.
Their mother.
He entered the name.
Wrong.
Emma stared at the compass charm around Caleb’s ankle through the glass.
“North.”
Roman typed NORTH.
The file opened.
A video.
Thomas Vale appeared onscreen.
Alive.
Older.
Sick.
Recorded nine months earlier.
Everyone went silent.
Thomas looked directly into the camera.
“If Roman is watching this, then I failed.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
Thomas continued.
“I built something I told myself was necessary. I told myself powerful families required insurance. Judges required leverage. Politicians required reminders. Doctors required incentives.”
Emma looked horrified.
Thomas swallowed.
“Children became numbers. Mothers became contracts. Eventually, even I stopped recognizing what I had created.”
Roman’s hands curled.
His father had built the network.
Not discovered it.
Built it.
“I tried to dismantle it after Lenora died,” Thomas said. “Others refused. Dr. Leonard Shaw. Frederick Crane. And someone much closer to Roman than he will want to believe.”
Celeste whispered, “Who?”
Thomas looked away from the camera.
“When Emma Carter discovered the transfers, I knew they would kill her. I moved her. I allowed Roman to believe she betrayed him because anger kept him from searching.”
Roman whispered, “You son of a…”
The video continued.
“I ordered Emma’s embryos preserved without her consent.”
Emma closed her eyes.
Roman looked at her.
The violation was almost impossible to comprehend.
Thomas’s voice weakened.
“I believed someday I could return what I stole from them.”
Roman’s eyes went back to the screen.
“The twins were implanted without my approval after my death was staged.”
Roman froze.
Victor cursed softly.
Thomas said:
“Yes, Roman. If you’re watching this, I may still be alive.”
Nobody breathed.
“The body buried under my name belonged to another man.”
Roman leaned toward the monitor.
His father’s next words came slowly.
“I disappeared because the person controlling the network needed to believe I was dead.”
Roman whispered, “Who?”
Thomas looked directly into the camera.
“The person who arranged Emma’s attack.”
The video glitched.
Static filled the screen.
Then Thomas returned.
“The person who stole Roman’s money.”
Celeste gripped the table.
“The person who brought the poisoned bottle to the hospital.”
Roman’s blood turned cold.
The video froze again before the final name.
Emma typed furiously.
“File corruption.”
Roman slammed a hand against the desk.
Victor said, “There may be another copy.”
Then Caleb’s monitor alarm sounded from down the hall.
Emma ran.
Roman followed.
They reached the room.
Marco was standing over an unconscious nurse.
Caleb’s crib was empty.
Roman stopped.
The window beside the crib had been opened.
Impossible.
They were on the fourth floor.
Marco looked sick.
“Roman…”
“Where is my son?”
“I turned around for thirty seconds.”
Roman grabbed him by the shirt.
“WHERE IS MY SON?”
Emma saw something on the mattress.
A red string bracelet.
Caleb’s compass charm.
Under it was a note.
She unfolded it.
Her hands shook.
Roman released Marco.
“What does it say?”
Emma looked up.
BRING THE DRIVE TO HAWTHORNE HOUSE. COME ALONE.
May you like
Below it was a second line.
IF YOU WANT BOTH OF YOUR CHILDREN BACK ALIVE.
