Chapter 7 - The Child Derek Could Never Have
The medical record arrived through Vanessa.
She found it inside Derek's encrypted personal archive.
A diagnosis.
A surgery.
Two failed procedures.
And a specialist's conclusion dated eleven months before Khloe became pregnant.
Derek Hale was almost certainly infertile.
Khloe read the report three times.
Then vomited.
Not because of pregnancy.
Because she remembered the night.
January twenty-fourth.
Derek had supposedly been in Milwaukee.
Khloe had attended Sofia Moretti's museum fundraiser with a friend.
She remembered champagne she hadn't ordered.
Dizziness.
A rideshare home.
Then fragments.
A man's voice.
A hand helping her through the door.
Morning.
Derek beside her.
Except—
“No.”
She stood so quickly the chair fell.
Dominic caught it.
“What?”
Khloe looked at him.
“You were there.”
His face changed.
“At the museum.”
Dominic became silent.
“I saw you that night.”
“Yes.”
“You helped me.”
“Yes.”
Memory returned in flashes.
Dominic finding her disoriented near the coatroom.
Dominic refusing to let a stranger take her outside.
Dominic driving her home.
Then—
“You brought me to my house.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
His expression was tortured.
“I handed you to Derek.”
Khloe stared.
“He was home?”
“He opened the door.”
“But the hotel records—”
“He could have returned without checking out.”
She pressed both hands to her temples.
“Then Derek could still be the father.”
“Possibly.”
Dominic hesitated.
“There is something else.”
Khloe looked up.
“You were drugged.”
Her face emptied.
“What?”
“I suspected it that night. You had one drink, according to your friend, but could barely stand.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I told Derek to take you to a hospital.”
“He didn't.”
“No.”
Khloe sat slowly.
Dominic's guilt was visible.
“I should have stayed.”
“You couldn't know.”
“I knew enough to be concerned.”
“You brought me safely home.”
“To the wrong man.”
Khloe reached for his hand.
“Dominic.”
He looked at her.
“What Derek did after you left belongs to Derek.”
The words seemed to hit somewhere deep.
The next revelation came from Vanessa.
Security footage.
Derek had forgotten the Hale house maintained cloud backups.
At 11:48 p.m., Dominic's car arrived.
At 11:54, it left.
At 12:11, another car arrived.
A man entered.
Khloe stared at the frozen image.
“I know him.”
Dominic leaned closer.
“Who?”
“Evan Carlisle.”
Derek's business partner.
The room went silent.
Evan had died six weeks later in a boating accident.
Khloe felt sick.
“Why did he come to my house?”
Nobody answered.
The footage showed Evan leaving forty minutes later.
Derek remained.
The implications were terrifying, but the video did not show what happened inside.
Khloe refused to invent memories.
She needed facts.
A DNA test became possible through a noninvasive prenatal paternity procedure.
Derek fought the court order.
That told Khloe almost as much as the result.
Two weeks later, Evelyn called.
“Khloe, sit down.”
She did.
“Derek is not the biological father.”
Khloe closed her eyes.
The world disappeared for several seconds.
“Evan?”
“We compared the fetal profile with DNA retained from Carlisle's autopsy.”
Khloe stopped breathing.
“It's a match.”
Dominic stood across the room.
He understood from her face.
Khloe began shaking.
“I don't remember.”
Dominic crossed toward her.
“I don't remember anything.”
He didn't touch her until she reached for him.
Then he held her.
Not romantically.
Not possessively.
Simply there.
Hours later, another piece emerged.
Evan's sister had kept his phone.
On it investigators discovered a scheduled email he had never sent.
It contained one sentence that changed everything.
Derek drugged Khloe. He says the pregnancy will solve our succession problem. I helped him, and I can't live with what we did.
Khloe read it.
Then again.
Evan had participated.
The details remained uncertain, and investigators cautioned that the email alone could not establish every event that night.
But one thing was clear.
Derek had orchestrated something monstrous.
“Succession problem?”
Khloe whispered.
Dominic's attorney opened another document.
Evan Carlisle's father had created a trust worth sixty million dollars.
If Evan died without acknowledged descendants, his controlling shares transferred to his business partner.
Derek.
If a biological child existed, however, the shares eventually belonged to that child.
Khloe looked at her stomach.
“Derek wanted Evan's company.”
Dominic nodded grimly.
“And after he discovered you were pregnant…”
“He needed me controlled.”
“Yes.”
Khloe understood the insurance policy.
The forged signatures.
The threats.
The isolation.
Her baby wasn't merely inconvenient to Derek.
Her baby was evidence.
And potentially the legal heir to everything Derek had stolen.
Then Dominic's phone rang.
He listened.
His face went dark.
“What happened?”
Khloe asked.
Dominic ended the call.
“Derek disappeared.”
“When?”
“Forty minutes ago.”
“Where would he go?”
Nobody knew.
Then Khloe's phone lit up.
A message from an unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
Sofia tied to a chair.
May you like
Beneath it:
Bring the flash drive. Come alone. Or your new family loses someone too.
