“You were eight years old.”
“I don’t remember any key.”
“It wasn’t something you had to remember.”
“What does that mean?”
Mom looked at Harrison.
“Her blood.”
My skin prickled.
“What?”
“Daniel helped design biometric encryption for Sentinel. The final archive required a genetic authentication sequence.”
Harrison whispered, “That’s why St. Jude.”
Mom nodded.
“The attack on Harrison wasn’t primarily about killing him.”
I felt the truth arriving before she said it.
“They needed my blood.”
“Yes.”
Everything snapped into place.
The prescription call.
The crash.
The emergency.
AB-negative.
My donation.
Someone had deliberately created a situation where my blood would enter a hospital system.
Not because I was the perfect donor.
Because they needed my DNA.
“Who?”
My mother whispered:
“Samuel Bell.”
But that didn’t make sense.
“He’s a doctor.”
“No.”
“Then who is he?”
Harrison had gone completely still.
Mom looked at him.
“Samuel Bell was born Samuel Cole.”
Vivian gasped.
Harrison whispered:
“No.”
I turned between them.
“What?”
Vivian’s face had become white.
Mom said:
“Jonathan had another son.”
Samuel Bell was fifty-two.
Older than Harrison.
Older than my father would have been.
Jonathan Cole had fathered him during another affair, then hidden him completely.
Unlike Daniel, Samuel knew the truth from childhood.
Jonathan trained him.
Educated him.
Used him.
Samuel became the invisible heir.
The son nobody knew existed.
“He believes the company belongs to him,” Mom said.
Harrison shook his head.
“The trust follows birth order.”
“Exactly.”
I understood.
Samuel was older than Daniel.
If Samuel proved he was Jonathan’s son, he would outrank Daniel’s branch.
“So why kill us?”
“Because he can’t prove it.”
Vivian spoke for the first time.
“Jonathan removed him from the trust.”
“Why?”
“Samuel became unstable.”
That was an elegant billionaire word for monster.
Harrison’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“When?”
He looked at me.
Then ended the call.
“Ethan’s gone.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“The protective detail found one soldier unconscious. Ethan was removed through the hospital loading dock.”
Samuel had taken him.
My brother.
The child I had spent twelve years keeping alive.
The person I had joined the Army to protect.
