Chapter 14 - The Surrogate's Second Ledger
We emerged into the freezing night through an overgrown cellar bulkhead behind the stables. The estate was completely silent save for the crackling roar of flames consuming the west wing of the manor in the distance. The rain was coming down in sheets, drenching us instantly and cooling the singed fabric of my clothes.
Daniel hustled me into the passenger seat of his unmarked cruiser, parked half a mile down the unpaved access lane beneath a canopy of pine trees. He slammed the door, locked it, and leaped behind the wheel, his face covered in soot, his hands shaking slightly as he started the engine.
"Croft took two rounds to the shoulder and ribs," Daniel said, breathing hard as the wipers fought the torrent of rain. "He bled heavily in the corridor, but he managed to limp out toward the woods. State troopers are converging on the perimeter now."
He reached over, flicking on the vehicle’s interior dome light, and turned the heater on full blast. "Are you hit? Did the fire catch you?"
"I’m fine... just my ribs," I muttered through chattering teeth. My fingers were trembling uncontrollably as I unzipped my jacket. The documents were safe, slightly singed at the corners, smelling of ash and old paper.
I didn't open the Harvard genetic report again. The truth that I was Arthur Senior’s biological daughter—my own mother’s half-sister—was a horror burned into my mind forever. Instead, I tore open the red wax seal on the manila envelope: *CLOE: SURROGATE RECORD #2*.
Inside lay four glossy, high-resolution ultrasound printouts, a medical discharge log from St. Jude’s Private Fertility Pavilion in Zurich, and an eight-page legal contract signed twelve years ago.
I read the opening page, and the air entirely deserted my lungs.
"Daniel... look at the dates," I whispered, the words freezing in my throat.
Daniel glanced over between watching the dark country road. "What is it?"
"Chloe isn't pregnant with her husband's child. Chloe has never been pregnant in her life."
I flipped the page, my finger tracing a clinical summary signed by a Dr. Helmut Vance-Vogel.
"Chloe underwent a complete hysterectomy when she was sixteen due to ovarian carcinoma," I read aloud, my voice hollow and trembling. "This entire pregnancy—the baby bump at the shower, the morning sickness, the sonogram photos she showed the family—it’s all a staged performance."
"Then whose baby were they toasting to?" Daniel demanded, his jaw hardening as his knuckles went white against the steering wheel. "Why would she celebrate the death of your baby if she wasn't competing for the first grandchild trust?"
"Because of page five," I said, cold tears cutting through the soot on my cheeks. "Martha didn't want Chloe to give birth. Martha hired an underground surrogate clinic to carry a child created from my harvested eggs and Arthur Senior's frozen genetic reserves. The surrogate was due in three weeks. Chloe’s fake pregnancy was merely a public cover story to claim the child as her own legal offspring."
May you like
My hands shook so violently the papers fluttered onto my lap.
"They shoved me off the balcony to kill *my* natural child," I sobbed, the full depravity of my family crashing down on me. "Because if my baby lived, the trust would have passed directly to my child. By killing my unborn baby, and having Chloe 'deliver' the surrogate child they created using my stolen eggs, Martha and Chloe would have full legal custody of the sole heir—and control of forty million dollars."
