Chapter 4 - The Vanishing FilesThe revelation hit the room like a thunderbolt. I looked over at Lily, who shrank back into the sofa, pulling her knees up to her chest.
"Is that true, Lily?" I asked gently, keeping my distance so as not to frighten her.
Lily’s eyes filled with tears. "My daddy was Marcus's son, Julian," she sobbed softly. "Before he died three years ago, he told me that his father was a bad man who used people like science experiments. My grandmother hid me away in that old apartment because she was scared Marcus would find me and take me away too. When she got sick and went to the hospital... I went looking for food. I saw a black car pull up to the stone wall behind your house. A man threw a plastic trash bag over the wall and drove away."
"Why didn't you run?" I asked.
"Because I heard crying," Lily whispered. "I opened the bag and found the box. And inside was the baby... with a letter taped to his chest."
I turned back to Evelyn, my blood boiling. "Explain. All of it."
"Twelve years ago, Marcus Sterling learned you had preserved your genetic material before starting chemotherapy," Evelyn confessed, her head bowed in shame. "He bought out the head researcher at CryoLife Storage and falsified the destruction logs. Marcus was obsessed with legacy, but his own son—Julian—was terminally ill and unable to produce an heir."
Evelyn wiped a tear from her cheek. "Marcus used your preserved DNA to conduct secret surrogate experiments through Vanguard Bio-Tech, attempting to create genetically superior heirs to control your former holdings and his own empire. Leo was born two weeks ago in a black-market medical facility in upstate New York."
"And why drop him in my trash?" I demanded.
"Because the surrogate mother realized what Marcus intended to do with the child," Evelyn revealed. "She escaped the facility with the baby, but Marcus’s men hunted her down. In her final moments of freedom, she brought the baby here, hoping you would protect your own flesh and blood. But Marcus’s henchmen intercepted her right outside your wall, grabbed her, and tossed the child over the wall like trash to erase the evidence!"
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"Where is the surrogate mother now?" I asked, a sick feeling rising in my stomach.
Evelyn looked up, her eyes wide with terror. "If she’s still alive... she’s being held at the Vanguard Research Facility in New Haven. And Nathan... she isn't a stranger. She was your former fiancee, Clara—the woman Marcus made you believe abandoned you twelve years ago!"
