Chapter 3 - The Second Heartbeat
Nobody believed Rachel at first.
Perhaps that was not entirely true.
I believed that she believed what she was saying.
That was different from accepting that the child inside her could belong to my husband.
Ethan stood beside the hospital bed, staring at the ultrasound image as though it were a bomb someone had placed between us.
“I have never given genetic material to any clinic without Ava,” he said.
Rachel wiped blood from her lip.
“You did at Northstar.”
“For our treatment.”
“That’s where they got it.”
Detective Ortiz ordered the officers to secure the floor. Rachel was placed in a wheelchair, checked for weapons, and taken into an adjoining examination room.
Her contractions had begun during the escape, but the medical team determined she was not yet in active labor. She was thirty-one weeks pregnant, nearly four weeks behind me.
That detail mattered.
If her embryo transfer had occurred one month after mine, Northstar had possessed biological material they claimed no longer existed.
Ethan sat beside me after the doctors left.
I could not look at him.
“Ava.”
“I know you didn’t sleep with her.”
“Then look at me.”
“I’m trying to understand how another woman is carrying your child.”
“Our child, if she’s telling the truth.”
The correction struck me harder than I expected.
I turned toward him.
“Do you want it to be true?”
Pain crossed his face.
“How can you ask me that?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to ask.”
He lowered his voice.
“You’re supposed to ask whether I betrayed you. I didn’t. You’re supposed to ask whether I knew there was another embryo. I didn’t. You can ask whether I love you, whether I love our daughter, whether I would burn that clinic to the ground before I let anyone take either of you.”
He took my hand.
“But don’t ask whether I wanted someone to steal a child from us.”
His voice cracked on the final word.
A child.
Until that moment, I had been thinking only about biology, fraud, and humiliation.
I had not allowed myself to think of Rachel’s baby as a child who might be ours.
A son.
A boy created during the same desperate years in which we had prayed for our daughter.
A baby who had been declared dead before he was ever given the chance to live.
I looked through the glass wall toward Rachel’s room.
She lay beneath a hospital blanket with a monitor around her stomach.
The steady beat of another fetal heart reached faintly through the open door.
Two heartbeats.
Two children.
Possibly ours.
Detective Ortiz returned with an FBI agent named Samuel Reed. He specialized in medical fraud and human-trafficking cases.
He explained that prenatal paternity testing could compare fetal DNA in Rachel’s blood with Ethan’s DNA without invasive procedures. Establishing maternity would be more complicated but still possible through genetic analysis.
Rachel agreed immediately.
“I want the truth,” she said.
Agent Reed studied her from across the room.
“Start with your real name.”
She hesitated.
“Rachel Cole.”
“Not Bennett?”
“No.”
“Why did you give Ava a false surname?”
“It was in the script.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Melissa Crane.”
I recognized the name.
Melissa had been Northstar’s senior patient coordinator.
She had scheduled my appointments, held my hand during injections, and once remained on the telephone with me for forty minutes after a failed cycle.
I had sent her flowers when I became pregnant.
Rachel continued.
“Melissa recruited me through Haven Family Solutions. I thought it was a legitimate surrogacy agency.”
“Why did you become a surrogate?” Reed asked.
“My sister needed surgery. She has a congenital heart problem. Insurance covered most of it, but not everything. Haven offered me one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”
“Who were the intended parents?”
“I was told they wanted privacy.”
“You signed a contract without meeting them?”
“They said the parents were public figures.”
“Did you have an attorney?”
“Haven provided one.”
Agent Reed exchanged a look with Ortiz.
That meant the lawyer had probably represented the agency, not Rachel.
She folded her arms around her stomach.
“For the first five months, everything seemed normal. The checks arrived. I went to appointments. Then I started asking questions.”
“What questions?”
“I wanted to know whether the parents planned to attend the birth. I wanted to know why the medical records listed different patient numbers. I asked for a copy of the genetic-health report.”
“And?”
“Melissa told me to stop being difficult.”
Rachel looked at me.
“Two weeks ago, I accidentally received an email that wasn’t intended for me. It contained your name.”
My pulse quickened.
“What did it say?”
“It referred to ‘Mitchell asset B.’”
Ethan’s expression darkened.
“A child is not an asset.”
“I know.”
“Where is the email?”
“They deleted it remotely from my account. After that, I searched your name. I found a photograph of you and Ethan at a charity event.”
She looked at him.
“That was the first time I had ever seen him.”
“Then why did you agree to accuse him of marrying you?” I asked.
Rachel’s eyes lowered.
“Because they took Maya.”
She explained that three days earlier, her sister had disappeared after leaving work. An hour later, Rachel received a video of Maya tied to a chair.
Melissa called with instructions.
Attend my baby shower.
Claim to be Ethan’s wife.
Trigger an argument.
Photograph me in visible distress.
Then leave through the front door, enter a waiting car and never contact us again.
“What did they promise?” Claire asked from the doorway.
She had arrived with coffee and clothing for everyone.
Rachel’s face tightened.
“That Maya would be released.”
“And you believed them?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Claire,” I warned.
“No, Ava. She could have called the police.”
Rachel turned toward my sister.
“They sent me a photograph of Maya outside our mother’s nursing home. They knew every person I loved. You think calling the police makes monsters disappear?”
Claire fell silent.
I understood her anger.
Rachel had entered our home and tried to destroy one of the happiest moments of my life.
But she had also walked into a trap with her unborn child inside her because she believed it was the only way to save her sister.
Fear did not excuse everything.
It did explain much of it.
Agent Reed asked about the call.
Rachel said the person identified as “North” was usually Melissa, although the voice Ethan heard had belonged to Dr. Vale.
“Why did they let you escape?” Ortiz asked.
“They didn’t let me escape. The car stopped at a gas station after I started vomiting. The driver opened the door, and I hit him with a tire wrench.”
Despite everything, Claire looked impressed.
Rachel continued.
“I ran through a drainage ditch and reached the hospital because I heard them mention where Ava had been taken.”
“Where is the car?” Reed asked.
She gave him the location.
Agents were sent immediately.
At dawn, the prenatal DNA samples were collected.
The results would take at least twenty-four hours, even with expedited processing.
Those twenty-four hours felt longer than the seven years we had waited for a positive pregnancy test.
Northstar closed its doors that morning.
A printed notice appeared on the entrance stating that a water-main failure had damaged the building.
The security system went offline.
Dr. Vale, Melissa Crane, and three laboratory employees could not be located.
Grant and Lydia Wexler released a statement through their attorney denying any involvement with Northstar beyond charitable contributions.
By noon, news vans surrounded the clinic.
Someone had leaked the baby-shower confrontation.
A short video of Rachel entering my home appeared online. It ended immediately after she called Ethan sweetheart, making the scene look exactly as intended: a pregnant mistress exposing a cheating husband in front of his pregnant wife.
The title beneath the video read:
DAYTON BUSINESSMAN IMPREGNATES WIFE AND SECRET LOVER.
Millions of people watched it.
Strangers called me pathetic for staying with Ethan.
Others accused me of faking infertility for sympathy.
One woman wrote that I deserved to lose my baby for “stealing another woman’s husband.”
I threw my phone across the hospital room.
Ethan picked it up and turned it off.
“They’re trying to control the story,” he said.
“They’re succeeding.”
“Only until the evidence comes out.”
“What if the evidence says Rachel’s baby is yours?”
“Then it says someone stole our embryo.”
“What if people don’t believe that?”
He crouched in front of me.
“I don’t care what people believe.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because our children will grow up in this world.”
The word escaped before I could stop it.
Children.
Plural.
Ethan heard it.
His eyes filled with emotion, but he did not smile.
Not yet.
That afternoon, my doctor discharged me under strict instructions to rest. Federal agents arranged protection at our home, but Ethan refused to return there while it remained a crime scene.
We went to my parents’ house instead.
Rachel was moved to a secure medical facility under an assumed name.
Maya remained missing.
Before we left the hospital, Rachel asked to speak with me alone.
She sat beside the window wearing borrowed clothes. Without her coat and makeup, she looked younger than thirty.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I remained near the door.
“For which part?”
“All of it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“For walking into your home. For calling Ethan sweetheart. For looking at you as though your pain didn’t matter.”
“Did it?”
Her hand moved across her stomach.
“At first, I couldn’t let it matter.”
“Because of Maya?”
“Because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do what they asked.”
She looked down.
“They told me your pregnancy was the result of an embryo mix-up. They said the baby inside you belonged to the intended parents who hired me.”
My chest tightened.
“Who?”
“They never gave me names.”
“What were you supposed to accomplish at the shower?”
“Convince you that Ethan had created another family. Afterward, Melissa planned to contact you privately. She would claim Northstar had discovered a transfer error and offer to resolve everything without publicity.”
“Resolve it how?”
Rachel’s silence answered before her words did.
“They wanted you to sign custody papers.”
I gripped the doorframe.
“For my daughter?”
“They planned to tell you she wasn’t biologically yours.”
“And what would happen to your baby?”
“They said he would go to you.”
An exchange.
They intended to convince me that the child I had carried, loved and prayed for belonged to someone else. Then they would offer Rachel’s son as a replacement.
As if children were mislabeled luggage.
“Why involve the false affair?”
“To make you distrust Ethan. They thought you would act emotionally if you believed he had betrayed you.”
“They underestimated us.”
Rachel looked at me.
“Yes.”
I left without accepting her apology.
But I did not reject it either.
At my parents’ home, Ethan and I took the guest room upstairs.
Neither of us slept.
Around midnight, I found him sitting on the floor beside the bed, studying the old photographs from our fertility treatment.
Images of microscopic embryos.
Black-and-white circles filled with possibility.
He held up one photograph.
“There were two.”
I sat beside him.
“What?”
“At the final appointment, the embryologist showed us two embryos.”
“I remember.”
“One was graded higher.”
“The other stopped developing.”
“That’s what they told us.”
He handed me the photograph.
Two embryos were visible.
One labeled A.
The other labeled B.
Mitchell Asset B.
My throat tightened.
“What if he survived?”
Ethan’s eyes remained on the image.
“What if our son has been alive all this time?”
I placed my head against his shoulder.
For seven years, we had grieved children who existed only in imagination. Failed cycles had felt like tiny funerals no one else could see.
Now one of those imagined children might be sleeping beneath Rachel’s heart.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel,” I whispered.
“Neither do I.”
“Part of me wants the test to be negative.”
“I understand.”
“And part of me already loves him.”
“I understand that too.”
He put his arm around me.
Downstairs, a floorboard creaked.
Ethan immediately stood.
Federal agents were stationed outside, but we had learned how little locked doors meant to the people behind Northstar.
He opened the bedroom door.
My father stood in the hallway.
He held a laptop.
“You need to see this.”
We followed him into his office.
He had spent the evening searching copies of Northstar’s billing database provided by his former colleague.
A spreadsheet showed embryo-storage records connected to my patient number.
Two specimens had been frozen after retrieval.
One was marked transferred.
The second was marked nonviable.
But six weeks later, the second record had been reactivated under another code.
HC-4471.
Haven Contract 4471.
Rachel’s contract number.
Ethan gripped the desk.
“That proves it.”
“It proves a record was changed,” my father said. “We still need the DNA.”
Another entry appeared beneath the contract.
A payment of eight hundred thousand dollars had been made to Northstar by the Wexler Family Medical Foundation.
The transfer description read:
SUCCESSFUL MALE ASSET ACQUISITION.
I covered my mouth.
My father clicked another folder.
Inside were scanned consent documents bearing Ethan’s signature.
He had supposedly authorized the donation of unused embryos to an anonymous family.
Ethan stared at them.
“I never signed this.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because the signature was copied from your mortgage paperwork.”
My father enlarged the image.
A tiny ink defect appeared beneath the final letter, identical in both documents.
Someone with access to our financial records had provided the signature.
“Who had access?” I asked.
Ethan and I looked at each other.
Our accountant.
Our mortgage broker.
Our attorney.
And members of our own family.
Before we could discuss it, the security alarm sounded.
A crash came from downstairs.
Ethan pushed me behind him.
My father reached into a locked drawer and removed an old handgun.
We moved into the hallway.
Smoke drifted upward from the kitchen.
Someone had thrown an incendiary device through the window.
Agents shouted outside.
The fire alarm screamed.
My mother appeared at the opposite end of the hall.
“Laura!” my father yelled. “Get down!”
A second window shattered.
This time, an object rolled across the living-room floor.
Agent Reed burst through the front door, kicked it back outside and shouted for everyone to evacuate.
We were rushed through the rear exit.
Flames climbed the kitchen curtains.
Ethan kept one arm around me as agents moved us toward an armored vehicle.
Then Claire screamed.
She stood near the garage, pointing toward the upstairs windows.
A figure in black emerged from my father’s office carrying the laptop.
The intruder climbed onto the porch roof.
An agent shouted for him to stop.
He jumped.
He struck the lawn, rolled and sprinted toward a waiting motorcycle beyond the fence.
Two agents pursued him, but the engine roared to life.
The motorcycle disappeared into the darkness.
My father stared at the broken office window.
“All the evidence was on that computer.”
“You made copies,” Reed said.
My father’s face went blank.
“I was about to.”
The kitchen fire was contained before it destroyed the house, but the laptop was gone.
The intruder had known exactly where to find it.
At two in the morning, we were moved again, this time to a federal safe house outside the city.
Nobody spoke during the drive.
My phone remained sealed in an evidence bag. Ethan’s had been replaced with a secure device.
Shortly after we arrived, Agent Reed received a call from the laboratory.
The expedited paternity result was ready.
We gathered around the kitchen table.
Rachel joined by secure video from the medical facility.
Her face appeared pale on the screen.
Agent Reed opened the report.
He read it once silently.
Then again.
“Say it,” Ethan demanded.
Reed looked at him.
“The probability that Ethan is the biological father of Rachel’s fetus is greater than 99.99 percent.”
The room seemed to lose its air.
Ethan closed his eyes.
I placed both hands over my mouth.
On the screen, Rachel began crying.
The child was his.
The child might be ours.
Agent Reed continued.
“The laboratory also performed a preliminary comparison using Ava’s existing genetic samples from Northstar’s prenatal screening records.”
My heart stopped.
“Preliminary?”
“They need a new sample to confirm because the chain of custody on the clinic records is compromised.”
“What does it show?”
He turned the page.
“The fetus Rachel is carrying appears to be genetically related to Ava as the biological mother.”
Ethan grabbed the back of a chair.
My knees weakened.
My father caught me.
A son.
We had a son.
He had been stolen before we knew he survived.
Rachel pressed her forehead to the screen, sobbing.
Then the video flickered.
A shadow moved behind her.
Agent Reed noticed it at the same moment I did.
“Rachel,” he said sharply. “Who is in the room?”
She turned.
A woman wearing hospital scrubs stepped into view.
Melissa Crane smiled at the camera.
Then she pressed a cloth over Rachel’s mouth.
Rachel fought violently.
The tablet crashed to the floor.
For several seconds, the screen showed only white tile, running feet and the edge of a wheelchair.
An alarm began screaming in the distance.
Melissa picked up the tablet.
Her familiar face filled the screen.
She looked directly at me.
“You should have signed the agreement when we offered you the chance.”
The connection ended.
Agent Reed immediately called the facility.
No one answered.
Then Ethan’s secure phone received a message from an impossible source.
Northstar’s official patient number.
BRING AVA TO THE CLINIC BY MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.
A second message followed.
May you like
OR YOUR SON WILL NEVER TAKE HIS FIRST BREATH.
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