Chapter 2 - THE TWIN WHO NEVER EXISTED
I read the message three times.
ASK HIM WHAT HE DID TO YOUR TWIN.
The contractions had slowed, but the child beneath my ribs seemed to move in response to my fear.
I pressed the call button.
The same nurse returned.
“Who delivered this?”
“A man from Mr. Cross’s security team.”
“Which one?”
She hesitated.
“Tall. Dark coat. He wore an earpiece.”
Every guard outside my room matched that description.
Nathaniel entered when he heard my raised voice.
I held up the birth certificate.
“Did you send this?”
He took one look at the handwriting and called his security chief.
“No one leaves this floor.”
His guards sealed the elevators.
The stairwells were checked.
Security footage showed a man in Nathaniel’s uniform entering the maternity wing.
His face remained hidden beneath a cap.
He walked into a supply closet and never emerged.
Behind the shelves, investigators found a maintenance tunnel connecting to an underground parking structure.
Someone had studied the hospital.
Someone expected me to be brought there.
Nathaniel sat beside my bed.
“Tell me about the twin.”
His gaze moved away.
The silence answered before he spoke.
“You knew.”
“I knew Eleanor delivered two children.”
A terrible pressure built in my chest.
“Why didn’t you tell me immediately?”
“I had no proof you were one of them.”
“You called me Grace before I told you my name.”
His jaw tightened.
“I have watched you for six months.”
The admission frightened me.
“You were watching me?”
“After your husband’s company attempted to purchase a Cross Meridian subsidiary, my investigators reviewed his private relationships. Your photograph appeared in a board file.”
“What board file?”
“A genetic succession report.”
I stared at him.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It didn’t to me either. Then I saw your face.”
He reached into his coat and removed an old photograph.
A young woman stood beside a lighthouse, her dark hair lifted by the wind.
She looked like me.
Not vaguely.
Exactly.
My mother.
Around her neck hung the emerald pendant.
Nathaniel stood beside her, younger and smiling.
“She told me she was pregnant three weeks after this picture,” he said.
“With twins?”
“We learned that later.”
“Where was my sibling?”
Nathaniel looked toward the rain-dark window.
“Eleanor delivered a girl and a boy at St. Agnes.”
I felt the baby move again.
“What happened?”
“The clinic caught fire shortly after midnight. Victor called me personally. He said Eleanor and both babies had died.”
“But I survived.”
“Yes.”
“And the boy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you look?”
“I searched for years.”
“You had billions.”
“Money is useless when every official record supports the lie.”
The bitterness in his voice sounded genuine.
Still, the note accused him.
“What did you do to my twin?”
Nathaniel stood.
“I arrived at St. Agnes before dawn. The police had recovered two infant bodies and one adult body.”
I could barely speak.
“Two babies.”
“That was the report.”
“You believed them?”
“At first.”
He removed a folded document.
“Three months later, a medical examiner contacted me. He believed the adult remains were not Eleanor’s. Before we could meet, he died in a house fire.”
The pattern tightened around us.
Fire.
Missing bodies.
False records.
Nathaniel continued.
“I ordered private testing on the infant remains. One was male. The other was not human.”
“What?”
“An anatomical training model used by the clinic.”
I felt sick.
“They placed a doll in a coffin?”
“To create the appearance of two dead children.”
“Then you knew one child survived.”
“I knew at least one did.”
“And you still failed to find us.”
His eyes met mine.
“That failure is the reason I never had another family.”
Before I could answer, Joseph Kaplan, Nathaniel’s chief counsel, entered.
He placed a digital tablet on the bed.
“We recovered data from the courthouse cameras.”
The footage showed Jonathan’s Mercedes arriving before I exited.
Vanessa sat in the passenger seat.
Jonathan’s driver received a text.
Then he accelerated toward the courthouse steps.
The text came from a number registered to Blackwell Security.
Its message read:
MAKE IT LOOK LIKE SHE SLIPPED.
My hand covered my stomach.
“They were going to kill me.”
Nathaniel’s expression turned deadly.
“And the baby.”
Joseph opened another file.
“Mrs. Blackwell’s divorce hearing was expedited through Judge Harold Crane. The judge’s son works for Blackwell Capital.”
The valid prenuptial agreement had been certified by Crane’s court despite several irregularities.
My signature appeared on pages I had never seen.
The notary died two years earlier.
Jonathan had not merely humiliated me.
He built a legal trap.
“Why?” I asked. “He already took everything.”
Nathaniel looked at the mysterious birth certificate.
“Perhaps he needed you publicly ruined before you disappeared.”
Joseph’s phone vibrated.
He read the message and turned pale.
“What is it?” Nathaniel demanded.
“The police searched Mrs. Blackwell’s former home.”
“My home.”
Joseph corrected himself.
“The Blackwell residence.”
They found my bedroom emptied.
The jewelry box was gone.
My medical records had been burned in the fireplace.
In Jonathan’s locked office, they discovered a refrigerator containing blood samples.
Labels showed my name and dates beginning three years earlier.
Jonathan had been taking my blood without my knowledge.
I remembered the private physician he insisted I visit.
The annual wellness checks.
The fertility examinations.
The vitamins that made me sleepy.
My marriage rearranged itself into something colder than betrayal.
“I became pregnant after two years of fertility treatments,” I said.
Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed.
“Which clinic?”
“Blackwell Family Reproductive Center.”
His face hardened.
“Victor’s clinic.”
The same organization that operated St. Agnes.
My unborn child may have been planned long before Jonathan met me.
A nurse entered to check the monitor.
She reached for my IV bag.
Nathaniel caught her wrist.
“What are you adding?”
The nurse froze.
A syringe was concealed in her palm.
Nathaniel’s guards moved instantly.
She tried to inject herself, but they restrained her.
The syringe contained a medication capable of triggering severe fetal distress.
Inside the woman’s pocket, police found a photograph.
It showed me as a newborn lying beside another infant.
The boy had a black crescent-shaped birthmark beneath his left ear.
On the back was a name.
DANIEL CROSS.
Nathaniel stared at it.
“My brother’s son is named Daniel.”
“Victor’s son?”
“Yes.”
“How old is he?”
“Thirty-one.”
The same age as me.
A horrible possibility formed.
Nathaniel called for a photograph.
Joseph displayed one on the tablet.
Daniel Cross stood at a corporate gala wearing a black tuxedo.
I knew his face.
He had been in the courtroom that morning.
May you like
Sitting behind Jonathan’s legal team.
The man who might be my twin had helped my husband take everything from me.
