Chapter 8 - The Woman Holding MeThe cassette player in my father's study had been untouched for years.
The tape clicked.
Static filled the room.
Then a woman's voice.
Young.
Breathing hard.
Crying.
A baby cried in the background.
I closed my eyes.
I knew that sound.
Not the baby.
The woman.
I had heard her once before.
In an old family video.
A wedding.
A woman standing behind the camera.
Laughing.
It was Rebecca.
But this recording sounded different.
She was terrified.
“I don't understand what you are doing.”
A man's voice answered.
“Stay calm.”
“That's my daughter.”
“She'll be safe.”
“You promised me.”
“Rebecca, listen.”
The tape crackled.
Then Rebecca asked:
“Who will raise her?”
Another voice answered.
My grandmother.
“She'll be raised by family.”
“Whose family?”
Silence.
Rebecca sobbed.
Then a sentence that made my blood run cold.
“If they discover the genetic results, they will come for her.”
The tape ended.
I sat motionless.
My father looked away.
“Who was they?”
He wouldn't say.
I asked again.
“Who?”
He whispered:
“EverBloom's predecessor.”
“What was it called?”
“Genesis Reproductive Research.”
The name sounded familiar.
I searched it later.
Genesis had been dissolved years earlier.
Its assets had been acquired through a series of mergers.
One of those assets became part of EverBloom.
Same research.
Same database.
Different logo.
The network had survived.
Then another thought hit me.
Rebecca knew they might come for me.
Why?
Because of my genetics.
But if my family had hidden me for decades, how had EverBloom found me now?
The answer came from a document I'd overlooked.
A DNA database.
My father had enrolled in a family genealogy service years ago.
So had I.
I had never thought about it.
But our data had been uploaded.
That was enough.
A commercial fertility company could identify related genetic profiles through third-party databases.
Maybe they hadn't found me through my job.
Maybe they found me through my blood.
I returned to the office and accessed the oldest EverBloom archives.
One record appeared under Rebecca's name.
A research project.
Project Seedline.
The participants were numbered.
Rebecca was Participant 003.
Another person was listed as Participant 004.
No name.
Just a code.
Then I saw the date.
The final sample was collected nine months before I was born.
I searched the code.
It matched a living patient.
A current EverBloom client.
I couldn't believe it.
The person was not Vanessa.
Not Grant.
Not my parents.
The patient was a woman named Eleanor Hayes.
I knew that name.
She was EverBloom's largest private investor.
The person behind Crescent Meridian Holdings.
The person whose ownership structure sat above Northstar.
I stared at the screen.
Eleanor wasn't just an investor.
She had funded Project Orchid.
She had financed the fertility network.
And apparently, she had been involved since the beginning.
I checked board records.
Her name appeared on Genesis documents from 1993.
She had been there when Rebecca was pregnant.
I suddenly understood the scale.
My family wasn't the center of the plan.
My family was one part of it.
The real network had been operating for decades.
And Vanessa's infertility had simply created a new opportunity.
I opened the Easter contract again.
Clause Fourteen was only one piece.
I reread the medical authorization section.
Then I saw something I had missed.
There was a provision allowing tissue collection from “all biological material produced in association with pregnancy.”
That included placenta.
Cord blood.
Amniotic samples.
Potentially fetal cells.
The clause suddenly looked less like surrogacy.
It looked like a research agreement disguised as a family arrangement.
I called Miriam.
“I found the investor.”
She went silent.
“Eleanor Hayes.”
“Claire…”
“Was she involved with Genesis?”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I was trying to protect you.”
“You protected me by letting my family build a contract around me?”
“No.”
Her voice broke.
“I was trying to build a case first.”
“A case against whom?”
Miriam didn't answer.
Then I heard a sound on her end.
A door opening.
She whispered:
“Someone is here.”
“Miriam?”
“I have to go.”
The line went dead.
I called back.
No answer.
Twenty minutes later, I received an email.
One attachment.
A photograph.
Miriam's office.
The room was empty.
Her desk drawer was open.
And on the floor was her badge.
May you like
Under the photograph was a single line:
Phase Three has begun.
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