Chapter 11 - The Boy Who Never Was
Daniel felt a suffocating dread, far worse than the fear of a bullet, crawl up his spine. “What did you find, Victor?”
Victor pulled a single sheet of paper from the folder, holding it beneath the umbrella so the rain wouldn't ruin it. It was an official medical document, stamped with the seal of St. Mary’s Maternity Hospital, dated eight years ago.
“You remember the night Leo was born, don't you?” Victor whispered, his raspy voice slithering through the sound of the falling rain. “Claire was in labor for twenty hours. Complications. A sudden emergency caesarean section while you were stuck at an overseas board meeting in Zurich.”
“What are you getting at?” Daniel’s voice trembled slightly.
“The baby boy Claire gave birth to that night suffered severe hypoxia,” Victor said, a wicked, triumphant grin spreading across his withered face. “He didn't survive the first three hours. Claire was devastated. She had a mental breakdown.”
Daniel froze, the world spinning in violent circles around him. “Shut up. Shut your mouth!”
“Claire couldn't bear to tell you,” Victor continued ruthlessly, waving the document. “So she made a deal with an underground adoption broker operating out of the private clinic in Geneva. She purchased a healthy newborn boy whose mother had died in childbirth. She passed him off as your son.”
Victor pointed a bony, trembling finger past Daniel, straight at the black Suburban where Leo sat huddled in the backseat.
“You tore my life apart to protect your family, Daniel. But that boy in your car isn't your son. He has no claim to your name, no claim to your bloodline, and no legal right to inherit a single dime of the Sterling estate.”
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Victor paused, his eyes narrowing into cold slits as he pulled out a small black detonator from his pocket.
“And the best part, Daniel? His biological father wasn't an anonymous donor. His real father… was me.”
