Chapter 3 - THE VAULT AT MERCER
The fluorescent lights of the corridor hummed, a sharp, buzzing tone that vibrated behind Mara’s temples.
Elias didn’t lunge again. Instead, he dropped his hands to his sides, his shoulders curving inward as if he were trying to shrink out of existence. “Mara, please. Put the paper away. You don’t know what you’re looking at.”
“I’m an emergency physician, Elias. I read pathology reports and clinical invoices for a living.” Mara stepped back, keeping the counter between them. Her hands were completely still now, numbed by adrenaline. “The Mercer Repository is a cryogenic tissue bank. Why is your deceased father’s name on an active maintenance account paid from your personal checking?”
From inside Room Two, Selene began to weep loudly. “What are you talking about? Elias, what does that paper say?”
Mara didn’t wait for him to manufacture another brilliant, airtight lie. She walked back into the room, holding the paper where Selene could see it. “Miss Cross, at the clinic in Manhattan... did Elias provide a fresh sample, or did he bring an authorized transfer voucher from an outside storage facility?”
Selene stared at the document, her eyes darting over the embossed seal of the Mercer Repository. “He... he told me he had frozen his own samples years ago, before he had a hernia repair that caused complications. He said the Manhattan clinic handled the transfer directly from his private storage.”
“He lied,” Mara said flatly.
“Mara, shut your mouth!” Elias hissed, stepping past the privacy curtain, his composure entirely cracked. “You have no right to dissect my family’s private medical history in front of a patient!”
“You made her my patient when you wheeled her through those doors!” Mara snapped back, her voice cutting through his bravado like a laser. “You brought your entire fraudulent life into my trauma bay! Now answer the question. Did you use an anonymous donor, or did you harvest genetic material from your father’s estate?”
“Neither!” Elias shouted, his voice echoing into the hallway. Two security guards paused at the end of the corridor, looking toward the room. Elias lowered his tone, breathing hard through his teeth. “Arthur was sick before he died. He had non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Before his aggressive chemotherapy, my mother insisted he preserve samples. She wanted the option of another child if he survived. When he died, the estate simply maintained the lease on the cryogenic locker. It’s an administrative oversight. A legacy contract that auto-renewed!”
It was smooth. It was plausible. It was exactly the kind of elegant explanation Elias Vane delivered to skeptical judges.
Except Mara knew his mother.
Evelyn Vane was an accountant who audited her own grocery receipts down to the penny. She never paid a twenty-dollar gym fee she didn’t use, let alone a five-thousand-dollar annual cryogenic storage fee for two decades out of mere sentimentality.
“An administrative oversight?” Mara challenged. “Then why was the invoice updated two weeks ago to add your signature as secondary custodian?”
Selene let out a sharp cry, grabbing her stomach. The telemetry monitor shrieked as her heart rate crossed 140 beats per minute.
Mara immediately turned her back on Elias, stepping to the bedside. “Selene, look at me. Breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. You are hyperventilating, which is depriving the placenta of oxygen.”
“I don’t know what’s inside me,” Selene sobbed, her fingernails digging into the mattress. “He told me we were starting an honest life. He told me his family welcomed me. His mother... his mother came to my baby shower last month!”
The room seemed to tilt beneath Mara’s clogs.
Evelyn.
Two weeks ago, Evelyn had called Mara to complain about her arthritis, casually asking if Mara could pick up her prescription because she was ‘too frail’ to leave the house. That same week, she had attended a baby shower for her son’s pregnant mistress.
“Evelyn was there?” Mara asked, her voice dangerously calm.
“She gave me a silver rattle,” Selene wept, rocking slightly. “She told me... she told me the Vane family line was finally safe. She said God had answered her prayers.”
Mara closed her eyes for three seconds. In those three seconds, seven years of self-doubt burned to ash. The years of feeling inadequate. The quiet shame of sitting in church while Evelyn prayed aloud for ‘the gift of fruitfulness to visit their barren home.’ It hadn't been a tragedy. It had been a coordinated, deliberate campaign of cruelty.
“Nurse Jackson,” Mara said without opening her eyes.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Administer twenty milligrams of labetalol IV push to bring Miss Cross’s blood pressure down, and prep a transfer to the Labor and Delivery unit at St. Jude’s. She needs continuous fetal monitoring, and I am recusing myself from her care due to an irreconcilable conflict of interest.”
“Right away, Doctor.”
Elias stepped forward, his eyes wild. “You can’t transfer her. Dr. Evans is the chief of medicine here, he’s my golf partner, I will have him—”
“Dr. Evans is in Cabo until Tuesday,” Mara interrupted, opening her eyes. They were cold, clear, and utterly lethal. “I am the attending physician on duty. What I write on this intake chart stands. And right now, I am noting that the patient is suffering acute emotional distress caused by domestic deception, requiring specialized obstetric intervention.”
“You’re destroying my career,” Elias whispered. “If this gets out to the partners—”
“Your career was built on my grandfather’s money and my silence,” Mara said, pulling off her stethoscope and laying it across the counter. “Both accounts are closed.”
Selene reached out suddenly, her trembling hand catching Mara’s sleeve. “Dr. Bellamy... please. Who is the father? If Elias didn’t use his father’s sample, and he didn’t use an anonymous donor... whose baby am I having?”
Mara looked down at the younger woman. Beneath the anger and betrayal, Mara felt a deep, piercing pity. Selene wasn't a malicious home-wrecker; she was an instrument, picked and groomed by a sociopath and his monstrous mother to fulfill an obsession.
“I don’t know, Selene,” Mara said gently. “Not yet. But Elias does.”
Elias stood in the doorway, the torn overcoat clutched in his fist. He looked at both women, his jaw working soundlessly. Then, without a single word of apology or explanation, he turned on his heel and strode out of the clinic into the rainy night.
Mara watched the double doors swing shut behind him. She reached into the pocket of her scrubs, fingers brushing against the cold silver watch and the folded invoice. As she pulled the paper out to file it in her personal locker, she noticed something she had missed in the dim lighting of Room Two.
May you like
Penciled on the back of the repository invoice, in Evelyn Vane’s unmistakable, sharp cursive, were six words:
Julian’s trust activates upon birth. Hurry.
