Chapter 5 - The Price of Two Children
Our daughter did not arrive that night.
The contractions slowed after medication, and the doctors managed to delay labor.
Rachel’s son remained stable as well.
For forty-eight hours, we occupied rooms across the hall from each other beneath federal protection.
Neither of us was permitted to approach a window.
Every nurse had identification checked twice.
Meals arrived in sealed containers.
The hospital officially listed both rooms as empty.
Outside, the story spread across the country.
The narrative changed when federal agents confirmed an investigation into Northstar Reproductive Center. Reporters uncovered former patients who had been told embryos were destroyed without receiving laboratory documentation. Three women discovered storage fees charged years after their treatment ended.
A couple in Indiana learned that a child genetically related to them had been born through an anonymous surrogate in another state.
Northstar had not committed one theft.
It had built a business from stolen hope.
Melissa Crane was arrested the morning after the fire. She was found at a bus station carrying cash, false identification and medical records belonging to nineteen families.
Grant Wexler remained missing.
Dr. Vale remained missing.
Lydia Wexler appeared on television beside her attorney.
She looked exhausted rather than polished.
“My husband told me our child was created from an embryo donated legally and anonymously,” she said. “I did not know another family had been deceived.”
According to Lydia, she had believed Rachel was carrying her son.
Grant had controlled the contracts, communication and payments. Lydia had never met Rachel because he claimed privacy protected them from extortion.
She ended the statement by addressing me.
“Mrs. Mitchell, I will not claim either of your children. I am sorry for the part my family played in what was done to yours.”
I believed her.
Ethan did not.
“Everyone is innocent after they get caught,” he said.
“She gave up any custody claim.”
“She never had one.”
“She could still have made this harder.”
He looked toward Rachel’s closed hospital-room door.
“It isn’t over.”
He was right.
Grant’s attorneys filed an emergency petition the next morning.
They argued that Rachel had signed a valid surrogacy agreement naming Grant and Lydia as intended parents. Although the embryo’s genetic origin had been misrepresented, the attorneys claimed Grant had paid for the pregnancy and possessed contractual parental rights.
The argument was monstrous.
It was also legally dangerous.
Our attorney, Miriam Shaw, arrived within an hour.
She was small, silver-haired and incapable of being intimidated.
“A contract created through fraud is not enforceable,” she said. “A contract concerning stolen genetic material is even less enforceable.”
“Then why are we worried?” I asked.
“Because Grant does not need to win. He needs to delay.”
“Until what?”
“Until the baby is born somewhere he controls.”
Rachel heard that sentence from the doorway.
She wore a hospital robe and held the wall for support.
“He’ll come for him.”
Agent Reed asked her to return to her room.
“No,” she said. “I’m done being moved around without knowing what’s happening.”
She sat beside my bed.
Miriam explained that we needed Rachel’s testimony, medical records and the complete Northstar registry to establish the chain of fraud.
The registry had disappeared with Grant and Vale.
Melissa had offered limited cooperation in exchange for immunity, but she claimed Vale maintained the only complete database.
My father still possessed portions of the billing records, but the originals had been destroyed in the clinic fire.
Grant’s attorneys called them fabricated.
Then Ethan was arrested.
Two federal agents entered my hospital room shortly after noon.
Agent Reed came with them.
His face told me he had already argued against it.
“Ethan Mitchell,” one agent said, “you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, falsification of medical documents and unlawful sale of human genetic material.”
I laughed.
I genuinely laughed because the accusation was so absurd that my mind refused to process it.
Ethan did not.
He stood slowly.
“Show me the warrant.”
They did.
The evidence included emails between an account registered to Ethan and Dr. Vale.
The messages discussed transferring “Asset B” to Grant Wexler for payment.
Bank records showed two hundred thousand dollars deposited into an offshore account bearing Ethan’s legal name.
His full legal name.
Ethan Gabriel Mercer-Mitchell.
Rachel’s false script had omitted it because the criminals had wanted her exposed as a liar.
But whoever created the financial records knew exactly who he was.
“They’re framing him,” I said.
Agent Reed nodded once.
“The evidence arrived anonymously this morning.”
“Then why arrest him?”
“Because the warrant was issued before we could disprove it.”
Ethan walked toward me.
An agent reached for his arm.
“Give us a minute,” Reed ordered.
The agent stepped back.
Ethan knelt beside the bed.
“I need you to stay calm.”
“My husband is being taken to jail, a billionaire is trying to buy our son, and the doctor who stole our embryo is somewhere outside. I am finished being told to stay calm.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
“That’s the woman I married.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not.”
He pressed his forehead against mine.
“They want you isolated.”
“I know.”
“Trust Reed. Trust Miriam. Keep your father close.”
“And you?”
“I’ll come back.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Yes, I can.”
He kissed me.
Then they placed him in handcuffs.
The image of those cuffs nearly broke me.
He had done nothing except love me through seven years of grief. Now the same people who stole our child were using forged evidence to turn that love into suspicion.
As he was led away, Rachel stood.
“This is my fault.”
“No,” I said.
“If I hadn’t gone to the shower—”
“They would have used someone else.”
“I helped them.”
“And now you’re helping us.”
She wiped tears from her face.
“What happens to me after the baby is born?”
The question had waited between us since the DNA results arrived.
Legally, Ethan and I were the genetic parents.
Rachel was the woman carrying our child.
But law could not measure the months she had protected him with her body.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I signed papers agreeing to surrender him.”
“Those papers were fraudulent.”
“I never planned to keep him.”
“Do you now?”
She looked down at her stomach.
“I love him.”
The honesty hurt, but I respected it.
“I talk to him at night,” she said. “He moves whenever I eat peaches. He hates it when I sleep on my left side. When I was scared, I told myself I could survive anything because he needed me.”
I took her hand.
“Loving him does not make you our enemy.”
“What does it make me?”
“Family, maybe.”
She stared at me.
I had not planned the word.
But once spoken, it felt right.
“You carried our son when we believed he was gone,” I continued. “Nothing can erase that.”
Rachel began crying.
“So you’re not going to throw me away after the birth?”
“No.”
She covered her face.
For the first time, I embraced her.
It was not forgiveness for everything.
It was the beginning of something more complicated and perhaps more valuable.
That evening, Lydia Wexler came to the hospital.
Federal agents searched her before allowing her inside.
She brought a metal storage box.
“My husband kept this in a private office,” she said.
Inside were contracts, payment records and a handwritten ledger.
Grant had recorded every transaction with Northstar.
Names of intended parents.
Patient numbers.
Embryo grades.
Prices.
Beside my patient number, he had written:
Two viable. Female remains with source mother. Male reserved for Wexler succession.
He had known from the beginning that my daughter was mine.
The proposed exchange had been another lie.
Grant never intended to give Rachel’s son to me.
He wanted both children under his control long enough to conceal the genetic evidence, then planned to make our son disappear into a private adoption network.
Lydia looked physically ill.
“I married a man who believed money made desire indistinguishable from ownership.”
“Where is he?” Agent Reed asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Vale?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Reed pointed toward the ledger.
“This could clear Ethan.”
“There’s more.”
Lydia removed a recording device.
On it was a conversation between Grant and Vale from three weeks earlier.
Grant discussed framing Ethan if the scheme failed.
Vale objected.
Grant replied, “A desperate husband with financial problems is believable. A billionaire purchasing an heir is not.”
Ethan had no financial problems, but Grant created them through false accounts and forged documents.
The recording was enough to challenge the warrant.
Miriam began preparing an emergency motion.
For the first time since Ethan’s arrest, I felt hope.
Then every alarm in Rachel’s room activated.
We heard her scream.
I turned.
She was no longer beside my bed.
The bathroom window stood open.
A nurse lay unconscious on the floor.
Rachel had been taken again.
This time, the kidnappers left blood on the windowsill.
Agent Reed ordered the hospital locked down, but security footage showed an ambulance leaving the loading dock two minutes earlier.
It carried valid emergency credentials.
Grant still had people inside the system.
My phone rang.
Vale’s face appeared on the screen.
Behind him, Rachel lay inside what looked like an abandoned delivery room. Her legs were secured to the bed.
She was conscious and in active labor.
“Her water broke twenty minutes ago,” Vale said.
I could hear Rachel crying out behind him.
“Take her to a hospital.”
“That is no longer possible.”
“Why?”
“Grant intends to remove the child immediately after delivery.”
Lydia stepped toward the screen.
“Where is my husband?”
Vale’s eyes widened when he saw her.
“You should not be there.”
“You should answer me.”
Vale glanced off camera.
Someone shouted in the background.
Then Grant appeared.
He held a gun against Rachel’s stomach.
Lydia covered her mouth.
“Grant.”
“My attorneys informed me that you surrendered the claim.”
“He is not our child.”
“He was supposed to be.”
“No child was ever supposed to be purchased.”
His face twisted.
“You wanted a son.”
“I wanted a family. Not this.”
“You enjoyed the house, the foundation and the name.”
“And I will spend the rest of my life helping destroy that name if you hurt her.”
Grant’s expression went cold.
He aimed the camera toward Rachel.
“Bring Ava.”
Agent Reed shook his head.
Grant continued.
“Vale will send the location. No agents. No tracking devices.”
“You know we won’t agree to that,” Reed said.
“Then Rachel delivers without medical assistance.”
Vale leaned toward the camera.
“The fetus is showing signs of distress.”
A monitor sounded behind him.
I recognized the deceleration from years of fertility appointments and prenatal classes.
Our son’s heartbeat was slowing.
“Please,” Rachel gasped. “Help him.”
Grant looked directly at me.
“You have forty minutes.”
The call ended.
At that exact moment, pain exploded across my lower back.
Warm fluid spread beneath me.
My mother shouted for a nurse.
I gripped the bedrail as another contraction struck.
My daughter had chosen that moment to come.
Across the city, Rachel was in labor with my son.
Ethan was still in federal custody.
May you like
And Grant Wexler had given me forty minutes to choose which child I would try to save.
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