Chapter 2 - ELISE’S VOICE
Adrian locked the library doors.
It was the first time Nadia had ever seen him do it.
The Whitmore library had always felt ceremonial rather than private, with twelve-foot shelves, dark walnut paneling, and framed photographs of men who had built railroads, banks, and reputations large enough to hide a century of mistakes. Adrian hated the room. Elise had once told Nadia that he called it “the family museum of people who never apologized.”
Now he placed the memory card on the desk beneath his father’s portrait.
Noah slept in a bassinet beside them.
Evelyn had been ordered to stay out.
Malcolm had been asked to leave the estate.
Neither instruction had gone over well.
Adrian inserted the card into his laptop.
There were four files.
Three were photographs.
One was a video.
The first photograph showed a page from a medical chart stamped with the logo of Crestview Fertility Center. Nadia recognized Elise’s name.
The second showed two specimen labels.
ADRIAN WHITMORE.
LUCAS WHITMORE.
The third showed a consent form.
Adrian leaned closer.
“That’s not my signature.”
Nadia looked at it.
The handwriting was close.
Very close.
But she had seen Adrian sign pharmacy authorizations and insurance forms during Elise’s hospitalization. His capital A always leaned slightly left. The signature on the consent form leaned right.
“What does the form authorize?” she asked.
Adrian scrolled down.
“Use of cryopreserved reproductive material.”
“Whose?”
He did not answer immediately.
Then he pointed.
The donor identification number matched the label beside Lucas’s name.
Nadia felt cold.
“So someone substituted Lucas’s sample.”
“Maybe.”
“Without your consent.”
“And without Elise’s.”
Adrian clicked the video.
For several seconds the screen remained black.
Then Elise appeared.
Nadia stopped breathing.
The video had been recorded in the nursery.
Elise was visibly pregnant, probably seven months. Her hair was pulled into a loose knot. She wore Adrian’s gray sweatshirt and no makeup. She looked tired but healthy.
Alive.
Nadia had not heard her voice since the hospital.
“If you’re watching this,” Elise said, “I either lost my nerve or I ran out of time.”
Adrian covered his mouth with one hand.
Elise looked directly into the camera.
“Adrian, I need you to understand something first. I did not betray you. I did not sleep with Lucas. I did not lie to you about who this baby was supposed to be.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Nadia wanted to look away, but she could not.
Elise continued.
“Six weeks ago I found a billing code that didn’t make sense. I asked Crestview for our full embryology record. They refused twice. Then a nurse named Tessa Vale called me from a blocked number and told me to stop asking questions.”
Nadia glanced at Adrian.
He was staring at the screen.
“Tessa said there had been a substitution the day our embryos were created. She wouldn’t tell me who authorized it. She only said the sample marked with your name did not belong to you.”
Elise looked down in the video, fighting tears.
“I thought she was lying. Then she sent me the photographs on this card.”
Adrian paused the video.
He stood abruptly and walked to the window.
Nadia let him.
Outside, two security guards crossed the lawn toward the pool. Adrian had already told them to preserve the gate, the stroller, and the terrace cameras.
“Why would Lucas’s sample even be there?” Adrian asked.
Nadia hesitated.
“You told me he froze sperm before chemotherapy.”
Adrian turned.
He had mentioned it once, months earlier, when Elise was going through treatment. Lucas had survived lymphoma in his twenties. Before chemotherapy, he had banked reproductive material because the drugs might make him infertile.
Lucas had never married.
He had died at thirty-four in what the family described as a boating accident on Lake Cormorant.
His body had been recovered three days later.
At least according to the newspaper articles.
Adrian returned to the desk and resumed the video.
Elise’s voice filled the room again.
“I confronted Evelyn.”
Nadia’s eyes widened.
Adrian went completely still.
“She told me I was imagining things. Then she asked me whether I understood what a scandal could do to Adrian after Lucas’s death. I told her I didn’t care about scandal. I cared about consent.”
Elise swallowed.
“She cried.”
That seemed to surprise Adrian more than anything else.
“She told me she had tried to fix something years ago and made it worse. She said if I kept digging, people would get hurt. She would not tell me what she meant.”
The video flickered.
Then Elise leaned closer.
“There is something else. Lucas did not die because he was careless with a boat.”
Adrian gripped the edge of the desk.
Nadia felt the room tilt.
Elise continued.
“I found a message Lucas sent to Malcolm Reed two days before the accident. He said he had proof that money was being moved out of the family trust through shell charities. He told Malcolm he was going to the board.”
Adrian whispered, “No.”
“Elise…” Nadia said softly.
But the woman on the screen was already speaking again.
“I don’t know whether Malcolm had anything to do with Lucas’s death. I only know that Tessa told me the same man who ordered Lucas’s sample transferred also requested that the fertility clinic destroy part of its audit log.”
Elise paused.
Then she said the name.
“Malcolm Reed.”
Adrian shut the laptop.
The sound cracked through the library.
For several seconds neither of them moved.
Then Noah stirred in the bassinet.
Adrian crossed the room and picked him up.
The gesture was instinctive, tender, and almost desperate.
Nadia watched him press his cheek to the baby’s head.
“My brother’s son,” he whispered.
Nadia stepped closer.
“Your son too.”
Adrian looked at her.
His eyes were wet.
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes.”
“What if Elise knew before he was born?”
“She was trying to protect both of you.”
“What if she only stayed because she was afraid to tell me?”
Nadia shook her head.
“You didn’t see her when she talked about you.”
“I saw her every day.”
“You saw your wife. I saw my friend when you weren’t in the room.”
That stopped him.
“Elise loved you,” Nadia said. “She was scared of what someone had done to your family. That is not the same thing as being scared of you.”
A knock hit the locked library door.
Adrian stiffened.
“Who is it?”
“Me,” Evelyn said.
Adrian did not move.
“Go away.”
“Adrian, please.”
He laughed once, without humor.
“You had your chance at the pool.”
“I was wrong about Nadia.”
Nadia raised an eyebrow.
That apology had arrived suspiciously fast.
Evelyn continued through the door.
“But I was right about the report. You should not have opened it in front of Malcolm.”
Adrian looked at Nadia.
She went to the door and unlocked it, but kept the chain engaged.
Evelyn stood alone in the hallway.
She looked older than she had an hour ago.
“What do you know?” Adrian asked.
Evelyn’s eyes moved to the laptop.
“You watched Elise’s video.”
It was not a question.
Adrian stepped closer.
“You knew.”
Evelyn looked at Noah.
“I knew there was a possibility.”
“A possibility that my son was actually Lucas’s?”
“I knew Lucas’s sample had been stored. I knew Crestview had been compromised.”
“By Malcolm?”
Evelyn’s mouth tightened.
“I never had proof.”
“Did you confront him?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He told me Lucas had signed a broad authorization before his cancer treatment.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
Nadia felt a new kind of anger rise in her.
“You knew someone may have used a dead man’s genetic material without consent and you said nothing?”
Evelyn looked at her.
“I was trying to keep my family alive.”
“Someone just tried to roll a baby into a pool.”
“That is exactly what I mean.”
Adrian stepped forward.
“Start at the beginning.”
Evelyn looked toward the hall.
Then she spoke quietly.
“Lucas came to me four days before he died. He said Malcolm had been stealing from the Whitmore Preservation Trust for years. Not thousands. Millions. He said the money was hidden through nonprofit accounts controlled by people Malcolm thought no one would trace back to him.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Lucas asked me not to until he had proof.”
“He died four days later.”
“Yes.”
“And you still didn’t tell me.”
Evelyn’s eyes filled.
“I was afraid.”
“Of Malcolm?”
“Of what Malcolm had.”
Nadia watched her carefully.
“What did he have?”
Evelyn looked at Adrian.
“Your father’s signature on the first illegal transfer.”
Silence fell again.
Adrian’s father, Henry Whitmore, had died six years ago after a stroke.
He had been remembered as a generous businessman, a devoted husband, and the man who modernized the Whitmore Foundation.
Adrian stared at his mother.
“You think Dad was involved?”
“I think Malcolm made sure I believed he was.”
“And that was enough for you to bury Lucas’s investigation?”
“I had just lost one son. I thought I was protecting the other.”
Adrian looked as if she had struck him.
Evelyn’s voice broke.
“I was wrong.”
No one answered.
Then a sound came from upstairs.
Glass breaking.
Nadia turned first.
Adrian handed Noah to her and ran for the door.
They reached the second floor in less than thirty seconds.
The nursery door stood open.
A window had been shattered.
Drawers had been pulled out.
Elise’s desk had been emptied onto the floor.
And in the middle of the white rug lay one object.
A photograph.
Adrian picked it up.
It showed Lucas Whitmore standing beside Malcolm Reed outside Crestview Fertility Center.
May you like
On the back, someone had written one sentence in black ink.
THE WRONG BROTHER DIED.
