Chapter 12 - ETHAN'S SECRET
Ethan walked out.
I followed him.
He stood in the hallway staring through a window.
“What disease?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie.”
He remained silent.
“Ethan.”
Finally:
“Leukemia.”
My chest tightened.
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
“Are you sick now?”
“Remission.”
“You knew?”
“Obviously.”
“Why didn’t anyone else?”
“Because men in my position don’t announce weakness.”
I hated that sentence.
“Sophie wasn’t created to save you.”
“No.”
“But Harlow thought she could.”
“Yes.”
“And you never knew.”
“No.”
I sat beside him.
For the first time, Ethan Callahan looked tired.
Not feared.
Not powerful.
Just tired.
“Harlow harvested my cells without consent,” he said. “Then used my illness as justification.”
“That’s not justification.”
“I know.”
I thought about Sophie.
Every bottle.
Every sleepless night.
Her first laugh.
She was not a cure.
Not a pawn.
Not an heir.
She was herself.
Ethan said the same thing.
“I will never let anyone touch her for me.”
I looked at him.
Even if your cancer comes back?”
His answer came instantly.
“Even then.”
Something inside me shifted.
Later, federal agents raided Harlow’s secondary laboratory outside Chicago.
He wasn’t there.
But they found something worse.
A nursery.
Empty cribs.
Medical equipment.
Files.
Photos.
One photograph showed Sophie.
Taken through the hospital nursery glass the day she was born.
Another showed me asleep beside her.
On the back:
SUBJECT B-17 STABLE.
I nearly tore it apart.
Then Ethan found a list.
Future collection dates.
One was circled.
Sophie — 6 months.
Today.
My blood froze.
Harlow had expected us in Chicago.
He knew about the wedding.
The flight.
Everything.
Then Eleanor’s phone rang.
She answered.
Her face drained.
“Rachel.”
“What?”
“It’s Elena.”
My sister’s security team had been found unconscious.
Sophie was gone.
May you like
And in her crib was one handwritten note:
THE CHILD WAS NEVER YOURS TO KEEP.
