Chapter 17 - The Second Confession
The nursery seemed to freeze. Outside, a crack of thunder shook the rafters, rattling the windowpane against its frame, but Ethan felt entirely detached from his surroundings, as if gravity had ceased to exist.
"What did you say?" Ethan demanded, his voice dropping to a dangerous, vibrating octave.
"You always were so wonderfully blind, Ethan," Claire said, her hand stroking the baby's soft cheek with terrifying tenderness. "You thought my confession in court ten years ago was the whole truth? You thought I turned state's evidence because my conscience finally broke?"
She leaned forward, and the trench coat slipped open. Beneath it, her white blouse was soaked through with dark, spreading crimson across her left flank. She had been shot.
"Claire, you’re bleeding out," Ethan said, lowering his weapon slightly, his eyes tracking the rapid puddle forming at the base of the rocking chair.
"Who cares about the blood?" Claire wheezed, her breath rattling in her chest. "They tracked me from the clinic in White Plains. His men. Richard’s real inner circle. Not the corporate clowns you put in federal prison, Ethan. The men who manage the overseas trusts. The men who handle the extraction projects."
"If Richard is dead, who gave the order?"
"He died on the operating table forty-eight hours ago," Claire confessed, tears cutting clean lines through the dirt on her cheeks. "The cardiac arrest was real. But the contingency was triggered the moment his heart flatlined. He left instructions: the moment he was gone, this baby had to be secured. Richard used his own frozen genetic material from fifteen years ago—and mine. But when the in vitro procedure was done in Switzerland two years before our wedding, the clinic used two samples. One was Richard’s. One was taken from a routine medical screening you had at Columbia Presbyterian in 2011."
Ethan felt the room tilt. "You set that up before we even met."
"Richard wanted a pure heir, Ethan," Claire whispered, her voice failing, her grip on the revolver slipping until the weapon clattered harmlessly to the pine floor. "He hated you because you had Margaret’s blood, Margaret’s morality. He wanted an heir created in a laboratory, bound by trusts that no district attorney could ever pierce. But Margaret knew. Before she died, she hid the original lineage documentation in the one place Richard could never touch."
"Where?" Ethan stepped closer, his knees shaking.
May you like
Claire coughed, a spray of pink foam hitting her lips. "Harbor Ridge. Under the foundation of the old conservatory. Margaret didn't die in that car wreck, Ethan. Richard kept her in a private ward in Zurich for three years until she starved herself to death. And she left a ledger buried under the marble floors. If you don't find it before they do... they will use this child to dissolve Margaret House, reclaim the land, and wipe out everything you built."
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