Chapter 6 - THE BABY THAT WASN'T HIS
Garrison pushed me behind the pillar just before the SUV shot past.
The passenger mirror missed him by inches.
The vehicle smashed through the parking gate and disappeared onto the street before hospital security reached us.
I was shaking.
Not because I feared for myself.
My hands immediately covered my stomach.
Two heartbeats.
Two tiny lives that had existed in my world for less than an hour.
Suddenly, everything had changed.
Garrison called the police.
Then the federal investigator who had called him Blackbird.
Then someone else he refused to identify.
By sunset, there was security outside my Boston hotel room.
“Is this because of Julian?”
I asked.
Garrison stood at the window.
“I don’t know.”
“That means yes.”
“No. It means we have several people with reasons to be afraid.”
“Of what?”
“The storage records.”
Two days later, the answer became worse.
Chloe agreed to meet me.
No attorneys.
No Julian.
Just us.
She looked exhausted.
Her pregnancy was more visible now.
For the first few minutes, neither of us knew what to say.
Finally, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I had imagined hearing those words from her a hundred times.
I thought they would make me feel powerful.
They didn’t.
“You slept with my husband.”
“Yes.”
“You knew he was married.”
“Yes.”
“You watched him destroy me.”
Her eyes filled.
“I believed everything he told me.”
“That doesn’t excuse it.”
“I know.”
At least she did not ask me to forgive her.
Then she placed an envelope between us.
“I took a test.”
“What kind?”
“Prenatal paternity.”
My heart accelerated.
“Julian?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
I stared at her.
“The baby isn’t his?”
She shook her head.
“He’s excluded.”
I thought about the trust.
Thirty-eight million dollars.
Julian needed a biological child.
Yet he had been preparing to claim Chloe’s baby.
“Who is the father?”
“That’s why I wanted to see you.”
She pushed the report across the table.
The biological father’s identity was not listed.
But there was a kinship conclusion.
PATERNAL GENETIC PROFILE CONSISTENT WITH A FIRST-DEGREE RELATIVE OF JULIAN MERCER.
My mouth went dry.
“His brother?”
Chloe nodded.
“Grant.”
I knew Grant Mercer.
Everyone did.
Julian’s older half brother.
The family embarrassment.
A recovering addict who had disappeared from Cedar Hollow nearly a decade earlier.
“He’s alive?”
Chloe stared at me.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never slept with him.”
The room seemed to contract.
I could hear plates clattering in the café kitchen.
Someone laughed three tables away.
My pulse hammered in my ears.
“If you never slept with Grant…”
“I think Halpern impregnated me.”
I sat back.
No.
That sounded too insane.
Then I remembered the altered records.
The hidden embryos.
The B-17 program.
Nothing sounded impossible anymore.
“Why Grant?”
Chloe wiped tears from her face.
“Julian’s trust.”
“Grant is related.”
“And the trust language apparently doesn’t require a DNA test to name Julian specifically. It requires a child legally recognized as Julian’s biological descendant unless challenged.”
“They thought nobody would challenge it.”
She nodded.
“And if someone did?”
“Grant and Julian share enough paternal markers to create confusion with older family samples unless a direct test was ordered.”
I felt nauseated.
“They manufactured an heir.”
Chloe began crying.
“I think so.”
That evening, federal agents located Grant Mercer.
He had not disappeared.
He had been living under another name in Arizona.
When investigators showed him Chloe’s test, he stopped talking.
Then he asked for a lawyer.
The next morning, news crews appeared outside Julian’s office.
He still refused to admit anything.
But the confidence was gone.
When he spotted me leaving Lena’s building, he crossed the street.
“You think you won?”
Garrison stepped between us.
Julian ignored him.
“You think carrying somebody else’s children makes you better than me?”
I stared at him.
“No.”
I touched my stomach.
“It makes me free of you.”
His face twisted.
Then Garrison spoke.
“Walk away.”
Julian finally looked at him.
“You still playing sheriff?”
“No.”
Garrison reached into his coat.
He removed a small black credential wallet.
Julian stared at it.
And went completely pale.
I could not read what was inside.
But Julian could.
His lips parted.
“No.”
Garrison closed the wallet.
“Yes.”
Julian stepped backward.
“You were Blackbird.”
Garrison said nothing.
Julian’s fear became panic.
May you like
“You were supposed to be dead.”
And that was when I realized there was still a part of Garrison’s story he had never told me.
