Chapter 3 - The Broken Contract
The room spun. I had to grab the back of an armchair to keep my knees from collapsing.
Twins.
“No,” I choked out, shaking my head violently. “No, that’s impossible. Valerie had Lucas six years ago. We were in the hospital together! I held him in the delivery room!”
“You held one of them, Michael,” Richard corrected quietly.
I looked at Valerie. She was pressed against the mahogany front door, her body trembling so violently she looked like she might faint.
“Valerie... tell me he’s lying,” I begged, my voice breaking. “Tell me this is some sick mind game.”
She couldn't look me in the eye. “Michael... I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry...”
Her words struck me like a physical blow. The air rushed out of my lungs.
Seven years ago, my father-in-law had suddenly paid off his massive debt to a loan sharking operation. He told us he had won big at a casino in Indiana. At the same time, Valerie had taken a three-month 'sabbatical' in Denver, claiming she was helping her cousin recover from a severe car accident. I had stayed in Chicago, working ninety hours a week to make rent, missing her desperately, sending her half my paychecks.
She hadn't been in Denver.
She had been carrying Richard Sullivan’s children.
“Why?” I whispered, looking at Valerie as my eyes filled with burning tears. “Why would you do that to us?”
“My dad was going to be killed, Michael!” Valerie sobbed, finally looking up, her face streaked with tears. “You were barely making forty thousand a year back then! We were about to lose our apartment! Richard’s lawyers approached me through a private agency. They offered two hundred thousand dollars. All I had to do was carry an embryo!”
“An embryo?” I repeated, my brain racing. “Then why does Leo look like me? Why does he have my dimple? My eyes?”
Richard set his glass down with a heavy clack.
“Because Eleanor’s eggs were viable, but my sperm count was effectively zero due to a medical condition I suffered in my twenties,” Richard said calmly. “The fertility clinic used a donor. But when Valerie went through the private agency, she panicked during the second month of the contract. She was terrified of carrying a complete stranger’s child. So she paid a corrupt lab technician twenty thousand dollars to switch the donor sample.”
I stared at him in utter disbelief. “With... with mine?”
“You had given a fertility sample three months earlier when you and Valerie were trying to conceive,” Richard explained, his tone terrifyingly professional. “Valerie substituted your sample. The clinic fertilized Eleanor’s harvested eggs with your DNA.”
The world fell out from under my feet.
The boy upstairs—Leo—wasn't Richard’s son. He was mine.
And Lucas, the boy sleeping in his bed at home right now, was Leo’s biological twin brother.
“When Valerie gave birth,” Richard continued, “she discovered it was twins. The original contract was for one child. But Eleanor was so desperate, and Valerie was so terrified of you finding out about the illegal sample swap, that they made a secondary agreement. Valerie took one boy home to you, claiming he was your natural child born slightly premature. And Eleanor took the other.”
“You bought my son,” I whispered, horror rising in my throat. “You bought my blood.”
“I didn't buy him, Michael. I raised him,” Richard said, stepping forward, his eyes turning cold as ice. “I gave him a life you couldn't afford seven years ago. I gave him this house, private tutors, and a trust fund. And I gave you your career so you could provide for Lucas.”
May you like
He stepped closer, standing inches from me.
“You work for me, Michael. Your salary comes from my division. Your mortgage is paid because I keep you employed. You will take your wife, you will walk out that door, and you will never speak a word of this to anyone. Because if you do... I will destroy you.”
