Chapter 4 - The Black Ledger
The penthouse office of Vance Holdings was deathly silent when Julian and I walked in through the private elevator. The police had already placed a temporary seal on the front entrance, but as Ethan's legal wife and co-signatory on the family trust, my access card still cleared the biometric locks.
The smell of expensive leather and Ethan’s signature sandalwood cologne still lingered in the air, sickening me to my stomach. Just hours ago, this was the empire of a man who believed he was untouchable—a man who had stood at a church altar presenting my child as another woman’s baby, smiling at our family while executing a monstrous betrayal.
"The servers are already being monitored by forensic auditors," Julian said, typing rapidly on his tablet as he sat behind Ethan’s mahogany desk. "If Ethan paid for a second surrogate or private adoption agency, it won’t be in standard company expenses."
"Ethan was paranoid," I replied, walking toward the built-in bookshelf that lined the western wall. "He never kept his dirt on digital drives. He always said code could be hacked, but paper could be burned."
I stopped in front of the framed portrait of Ethan’s grandfather. Behind it was the wall safe. I entered the digits of our wedding anniversary—error. I entered his mother’s birthday—error. My hands trembled as I stared at the keypad. Then, a dark intuition struck me. I entered the date sixteen months ago: the exact day my fertility doctor told me my embryos had allegedly suffered a catastrophic cryo-preservation failure.
*Click.*
The heavy steel door swung outward with a faint hiss.
Inside sat stacks of bearer bonds, two fake passports bearing Ethan's likeness with different names, and a slim, black leather-bound ledger. I grabbed the book, my fingers trembling as I flipped through the pages.
Most of the entries were foreign wire transfers and coded initials. But on page fourteen, written in Ethan’s precise, arrogant script, was a single entry dated six months ago:
*Subject: Embryo #2 (Female).*
*Delivery: St. Jude Private Maternity Clinic, Maine.*
*Broker: M.V.*
*Destination: Harrington Trust.*
*Fee: $2.5 Million.*
My breath caught in my throat. The room seemed to spin.
"Julian," I whispered, holding up the ledger. "Look at this."
Julian rushed over, scanning the entry. His eyes widened in disbelief. "The Harringtons? Claire, the Harrington family owns half the state’s pharmaceutical sector. Arthur Harrington is on the governor’s judicial committee."
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"He sold our daughter," I whispered, the reality crashing down on me with suffocating force. "Ethan didn't just hide her. He sold my baby girl to one of the most powerful families in the country."
***
