Chapter 10 - GRANT WASN’T A MORGAN BY BLOOD
Grant laughed when I told him.
A strange, empty sound.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Naomi placed the records in front of him.
He stopped laughing.
Harrison had ordered DNA testing when Grant was nineteen after a serious car accident required transfusions.
The result did not match the expected paternal profile.
He buried it.
Grant’s mother knew.
Evelyn sat across from us.
Hands shaking.
“Who?” Grant asked.
She cried.
“Harrison’s business partner.”
“Name.”
“Daniel Ashford.”
The trust company.
Ashford Residential Trust.
The name suddenly mattered.
Daniel had died twenty years earlier.
He and Evelyn had been involved before her marriage.
Then briefly afterward.
Grant was his son.
Harrison raised Grant anyway.
Not out of pure kindness.
Because publicly admitting the truth would humiliate him and destabilize family ownership.
I watched Grant absorb it.
His entire identity had been built around being Harrison Morgan’s heir.
Now blood said otherwise.
“Does that affect the trust?”
Naomi nodded.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“If Harrison is not Grant’s biological father, your child is not a biological Morgan descendant through Grant.”
My heart stopped.
“Our baby loses the claim.”
Grant looked at me.
Then Naomi continued.
“But.”
There is always a but in wealthy-family trusts.
“Harrison legally adopted Grant at birth under an acknowledgment provision.”
So legally, Grant remained his son.
The trust language said descendant by blood or recognized legal parentage.
Our child still qualified.
Grant exhaled.
Then immediately looked ashamed.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For feeling relieved about money before asking if you were okay.”
That surprised me.
Maybe consequences were teaching him something.
Then Marcus arrived.
Aubrey remained in the hospital with the baby.
He looked exhausted.
“I heard.”
Grant looked at him.
“You knew?”
Marcus nodded.
“Dad told me years ago.”
“Why?”
“To convince me I was the real son.”
Grant flinched.
Marcus continued.
“He used it against both of us.”
Harrison had spent decades creating competition.
Grant as public heir.
Marcus as blood heir.
Neither trusted the other.
Both easier to control.
Then Marcus placed another file on the table.
“Peter wasn’t acting alone.”
“Who?”
He looked at Evelyn.
She went pale.
“No.”
Marcus nodded.
“Harrison.”
Grant stood.
“What?”
“Harrison staged part of the kidnapping.”
Not all.
Peter turned it real.
But Harrison originally arranged for Aubrey and the trust documents to disappear temporarily.
He wanted to frighten the board.
Force emergency authority.
Then appear to rescue the situation.
A manufactured crisis.
Except Peter hijacked it and tried to seize control permanently.
Grant stared at the wall.
“My father risked Aubrey’s life.”
“Yes.”
“The baby.”
“Yes.”
“Claire.”
Marcus looked at me.
“He did not expect Claire to be taken.”
But the distinction no longer mattered.
Harrison Morgan had treated every person around him as movable pieces.
Then my phone rang.
Hospital.
My doctor.
I answered.
Her voice was cautious.
“Claire, your latest bloodwork came back.”
My stomach tightened.
“Is something wrong?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What does that mean?”
“The hormone levels are higher than expected.”
I sat down.
“And?”
She smiled through the phone.
“I’d like you to come in tomorrow.”
May you like
“Why?”
“Because I think you may be carrying more than one baby.”
