Chapter 11 - THE GIRL WHO SHOULD NOT EXIST
Hadrian wanted to lie.
He wanted to tell Sorrel the adults were discussing paperwork.
He wanted to protect her from one more impossible truth.
Dr. Cole advised against it.
“She already heard enough to know something is happening.”
Hadrian sat beside Sorrel on the sofa.
“A twin is a brother or sister who begins growing at the same time as you.”
Sorrel frowned.
“Like two babies?”
“Yes.”
“Do I have one?”
Hadrian looked at Dr. Cole.
Then back at his daughter.
“We think you might.”
Sorrel’s eyes widened.
“A sister?”
“Maybe.”
“Where is she?”
Hadrian’s chest tightened.
“I don’t know.”
Sorrel considered this for several seconds.
“Does she know me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she have a daddy?”
Hadrian had no answer.
He hugged her.
“We are going to find out.”
The search moved from corporate conspiracy into something far more personal.
Westbridge’s surviving records were subpoenaed from an insurance archive.
Most had been corrupted.
Some had been intentionally destroyed when the clinic closed.
One backup remained.
A former embryologist named Dr. Helen Voss had copied internal files before leaving.
She lived in Oregon.
Federal agents reached her that afternoon.
At first, Voss refused to speak.
Then investigators mentioned Eleanor.
She changed her mind.
Hadrian joined the interview by secure video.
Dr. Voss was seventy-two.
Her hands shook.
Her memory did not.
“I knew this day would come.”
Hadrian stared.
“Then why did you never contact me?”
“Because people who contacted your wife were threatened.”
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
“By Sebastian?”
Voss looked away.
“By men who worked for him.”
Hadrian asked the question that mattered.
“What happened when Sorrel was born?”
Voss exhaled slowly.
“Your wife became pregnant after transfer of embryo B-3.”
“That is what we were told.”
“It was true.”
“Then how is there a twin?”
“The embryo divided.”
“Identical twins.”
“Yes.”
Hadrian’s heart pounded.
“Eleanor’s ultrasounds showed one fetus.”
Voss nodded.
“Because one was removed.”
Hadrian stared.
The words made no sense.
“What?”
Voss looked deeply ashamed.
“At approximately nine weeks, Eleanor underwent what she believed was a diagnostic procedure.”
Hadrian remembered.
Eleanor had experienced bleeding.
Westbridge sent her to a specialist.
Hadrian had been in Tokyo.
He had wanted to fly home.
Eleanor told him not to.
“Everything is fine.”
Hadrian’s hands went cold.
Voss continued.
“The second gestational sac was extracted.”
Hadrian stood.
“That is not possible.”
“It was experimental.”
“You are telling me someone surgically removed one of my unborn children from my wife?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
Voss’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Hadrian could not speak.
Julian turned away from the screen.
Ortiz looked stunned.
“What happened to the fetus?”
Voss hesitated.
“It was maintained artificially for a short period.”
Hadrian gripped the table.
“How short?”
“Six days.”
“And then?”
“Transferred.”
“To whom?”
Voss looked terrified even decades later.
“A surrogate.”
Hadrian felt the room disappear.
Somewhere, another woman had carried a genetically identical twin of Sorrel.
Without Hadrian’s knowledge.
Without Eleanor’s informed consent.
“Who?”
“I was never given her real name.”
“Did Eleanor know?”
“Not then.”
“When did she find out?”
“Years later.”
Hadrian remembered the red folder.
Project Orchard.
The trust changes.
Eleanor’s terror before her death.
Voss continued.
“Your father-in-law financed the procedure.”
“Why?”
“Project Orchard.”
“What was the objective?”
Voss swallowed.
“Sebastian’s mother had the same neurological disease that later killed his wife.”
Julian nodded.
Their grandmother.
“Sebastian became obsessed with eliminating the mutation.”
Hadrian understood disease prevention.
He did not understand stealing a fetus.
Voss continued.
“He funded gene-editing experiments.”
“On human embryos.”
“Yes.”
“B-6?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to B-6?”
“It was edited but never implanted.”
“Then what was Sorrel’s twin?”
“Unedited.”
Hadrian frowned.
“Why take her?”
“Control sample.”
The phrase sickened him.
Voss looked down.
“I know how monstrous that sounds.”
“It is monstrous.”
“Yes.”
Hadrian forced himself to continue.
“Where was the twin born?”
“Private facility.”
“When?”
“Six days after Sorrel.”
Different gestation circumstances had altered timing.
“What happened to her?”
Voss closed her eyes.
“She was given to a family.”
Hadrian stopped breathing.
“What family?”
“I don’t know.”
“You worked there.”
“I did not manage placement.”
“Who did?”
“Dr. Bell.”
The same physician.
Again.
Hadrian’s anger rose.
“Bell is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Who else knew?”
“Sebastian.”
“Marcus?”
“Not then.”
“Eleanor?”
Voss looked at him.
“She found out when the girls were almost three.”
Hadrian’s heart broke.
Eleanor had carried that knowledge.
She had discovered another daughter existed.
And she had not told him.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Voss’s expression softened.
“She tried.”
Hadrian remembered her final drive.
She was going to him.
She had planned to tell him everything.
Voss continued.
“She came to me.”
“She was furious.”
“She wanted the other child found.”
“Did you help her?”
“I gave her everything I had.”
“Did she find the family?”
“I think so.”
Hadrian leaned forward.
“Who?”
“I do not know.”
“Why?”
“She stopped contacting me two weeks later.”
Two weeks later.
Eleanor died.
Hadrian’s grief transformed again.
She had been on the verge of bringing home a daughter stolen before birth.
Sebastian stopped her.
Voss added something else.
“Eleanor told me the child had been renamed.”
“What name?”
“She did not say.”
“Location?”
“Somewhere on the East Coast.”
Hadrian closed his eyes.
Thousands of possibilities.
Then Sorrel’s smartwatch recordings became relevant again.
The unknown older man, Sebastian, had said Sorrel’s DNA was necessary.
To find the other girl.
Why would Sebastian need Sorrel’s DNA if he originally arranged the placement?
Because perhaps Dr. Bell had hidden the final identity.
Maybe Eleanor had moved the record.
Maybe only genetic matching could locate her.
Ortiz contacted genetic databases.
Legal restrictions complicated everything.
Hadrian provided samples.
Sorrel’s profile entered missing-child and familial databases with court approval.
They waited.
Meanwhile, the tactical team reached the abandoned lakeside clinic Celeste had named.
Marcus was gone.
The chair from the ransom video remained.
Blood matched Marcus.
Rope fibers remained.
But investigators found something else.
A hidden room beneath the clinic.
Inside were photographs.
Hadrian.
Sorrel.
Eleanor.
Celeste.
Julian.
Marta.
Dozens of company directors.
And photographs of girls.
At least twenty.
Ages six to ten.
Hadrian stared at them.
“Why?”
Ortiz shook her head.
“They may have been searching.”
“For Sorrel’s twin.”
One photograph caught Hadrian’s attention.
A girl sitting outside a library.
Dark hair.
Dark eyes.
About seven.
She looked enough like Sorrel to stop his heart.
“Who is she?”
Ortiz checked the back.
A handwritten note.
NEGATIVE.
Not the twin.
Another child.
Another innocent family monitored.
Sebastian had been hunting Sorrel’s sister.
The search had apparently lasted months.
At 3:30 a.m., Hadrian’s phone rang.
Dr. Sethi.
“We have a familial database hit.”
Hadrian sat upright.
“Where?”
“Pennsylvania.”
His heart pounded.
“Name?”
Dr. Sethi hesitated.
“The record belongs to a child entered through a hospital genetic screening program.”
“How old?”
“Seven.”
Hadrian stood.
“Name.”
Dr. Sethi answered.
“Livia Grant.”
Hadrian repeated it silently.
Livia.
“Parents?”
“Registered mother is Naomi Grant.”
“Father?”
“No father listed.”
“Where do they live?”
“Small town near Lancaster.”
Hadrian looked upstairs toward Sorrel.
“Is the match certain?”
Dr. Sethi’s voice softened.
“Hadrian.”
“What?”
“The genetic similarity is beyond ordinary sibling probability.”
“How close?”
“Livia Grant and Sorrel are monozygotic twins.”
Hadrian closed his eyes.
His second daughter was alive.
Seven years old.
Two hundred miles away.
Then Dr. Sethi added.
“There is a problem.”
Hadrian’s relief vanished.
“What?”
“The hospital record was accessed yesterday.”
“By whom?”
“An external research credential.”
Hadrian already knew.
“North Cedar?”
“Yes.”
Hadrian grabbed his coat.
Sebastian knew where Livia was.
May you like
And he had found her first.
---
