Chapter 13 - The Name Rebecca Wouldn’t SayRebecca refused to explain in front of Ethan.
Sebastian respected that for exactly eleven minutes.
Then they stood in an empty hospital consultation room.
“Who is the other child?”
Rebecca paced.
“I don’t know.”
“You reacted like you did.”
“I reacted because there’s something I never told you.”
Sebastian waited.
Rebecca pressed both palms against the table.
“When Ethan was born, there was another baby in the nursery.”
Sebastian stared.
“That happens in hospitals.”
“Not another random baby.”
She looked at him.
“My baby.”
Sebastian stopped breathing.
“Twins?”
Rebecca nodded.
“A boy and a girl.”
Sebastian sat down.
The room suddenly felt too small.
“What happened?”
Rebecca cried quietly.
“The girl was stillborn.”
Sebastian looked away.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s what they told me.”
His eyes returned to her.
“What do you mean?”
“I never saw her.”
Sebastian’s expression hardened.
Rebecca explained.
There had been complications.
Emergency surgery.
Heavy medication.
When she woke, Ethan was in neonatal care.
The second baby had supposedly died.
Rebecca had been young, frightened, alone.
The hospital had handled everything.
“Which hospital?”
“St. Matthew’s.”
Sebastian knew the name.
It had closed eight years earlier.
“Why do you doubt them now?”
“Because Thomas Greer asked me something.”
“What?”
Rebecca swallowed.
“He asked whether I had ever wondered what happened to Ethan’s twin sister.”
Sebastian stood.
By evening Claudia knew everything.
She sat in her hospital bed holding Emilia while Sebastian explained.
Sophie sat nearby.
“You might have another daughter?” Sophie asked.
“We don’t know.”
“So I might have another sister?”
“We don’t know.”
Sophie frowned.
“You say that a lot for a grown-up.”
Claudia smiled.
“Welcome to adulthood.”
The search began.
Old hospital records.
Birth certificates.
Insurance files.
Archived personnel lists.
Sebastian expected resistance.
Instead, they found something worse.
Rebecca Sloan’s delivery record had been altered.
Two live births had originally been recorded.
Twenty-three minutes later, one entry had been changed.
Female infant.
Status: transferred.
Destination field deleted.
Claudia stared at the screen.
“She lived.”
“For at least some period.”
“And somebody removed where she went.”
Sebastian’s security director called.
Thomas Greer had been located.
Not alive.
His car had been found abandoned near the Hudson River.
Blood inside.
No body.
Claudia’s skin prickled.
“Marcus?”
“In federal custody.”
“So he couldn’t have done this.”
“No.”
That meant someone else had inherited Marcus’s secrets.
Or had always been above him.
At midnight, Sebastian received an email.
No sender.
One attachment.
A photograph.
A little girl, perhaps four years old, sitting on a swing.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
The resemblance to Ethan was unmistakable.
Beneath it:
YOU SPENT TWELVE YEARS BUILDING AN EMPIRE.
YOU NEVER NOTICED WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM YOU.
Then another line appeared.
ASK YOUR FATHER.
Sebastian stared at the words.
Claudia saw his face.
“Sebastian?”
He didn’t answer.
His father, Alejandro Navarro, had died nine years earlier.
A ruthless businessman.
A man Sebastian had spent half his life trying not to become.
Claudia touched his arm.
“What did your father have to do with Rebecca?”
Sebastian looked at the photograph.
Then he remembered something.
Twelve years earlier.
His father entering his office.
Telling him Rebecca Sloan was unsuitable.
Telling him distractions destroyed ambitious men.
Sebastian had laughed.
He had thought the relationship was already over.
He had never understood that Alejandro had been discussing something Sebastian didn’t know existed.
“My father knew.”
Claudia went still.
Sebastian looked at Ethan’s twin sister.
A child who might still be alive.
May you like
And for the first time, he understood that Marcus Vane might never have been the architect of his family’s oldest betrayal.
He might only have been the employee who carried it out.
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