Chapter 10 - The Surrender FormEvelyn examined the photographed surrender form.
The signature resembled Anna’s handwriting, but the document contained inconsistencies.
The hospital logo belonged to a design introduced two years after the boys’ birth.
The physician listed on the form had retired before Anna delivered.
Parts of the document were fabricated.
But the signature might have been copied from something real.
Anna remembered signing several forms while exhausted after childbirth.
Candice worked in maternity billing and brought papers directly to her bed.
One form supposedly authorized emergency testing for the second baby.
It may have been used to capture her signature.
The hospital’s original records had been destroyed in a flood eleven years earlier.
Marlene’s Ridgeway archive might contain the only surviving copies.
During questioning, Marlene denied kidnapping Anna or stealing Wyatt.
She described herself as a “family-protection coordinator” who helped Candice remove a child from danger.
“What danger?” Nora asked.
“Anna’s father.”
According to Marlene, Anna’s father wanted control of both grandsons because the twins inherited company shares through him. He believed Gabriel lacked financial discipline and intended to raise one child separately as a protected heir.
Anna rejected the claim.
“My father wanted both boys with us.”
Marlene insisted the trust arrangement created conflict before the twins were born. Someone approached Candice and offered money to separate them.
“Who?” Gabriel asked.
Marlene smiled.
“The person who paid for Anna’s crash.”
She refused to say more without immunity.
Nora found no immediate evidence supporting her story.
But the trust records showed a payment made sixteen years earlier to a consulting company called Twin Harbor Services.
The company’s registered officer was not Candice.
It was Charles Morrow, the attorney who managed Anna’s father’s estate.
Morrow had claimed he learned about Wyatt only after the birth.
The payment suggested he knew beforehand.
Investigators searched his office.
They found shredded correspondence, offshore-transfer records, and a photograph of Candice holding newborn Wyatt.
Morrow stood beside her.
On the back, someone wrote:
ONE HEIR PUBLIC. ONE HEIR PROTECTED.
The arrangement had been larger than Candice.
Gabriel confronted Morrow through a recorded interview.
“You knew where my son was.”
“I knew a child existed.”
“You paid Candice.”
“I followed your father-in-law’s instructions.”
“Anna’s father?”
Morrow hesitated.
“His written instructions.”
“Did you speak to him directly?”
“No.”
The instructions arrived through an encrypted account controlled by someone using Anna’s father’s credentials after he entered hospice care.
The same account later approved payments for Cedar Vale and Ridgeway.
Someone had continued operating through the identity of a dying man.
Morrow claimed he feared exposing the truth because both boys’ trusts could be frozen.
He chose secrecy.
Like everyone else, he called cowardice protection.
Meanwhile, Candice emptied two offshore accounts and disappeared from known locations.
Wyatt received a message.
You know Gabriel will choose Lucas when the DNA comes back. Meet me and I’ll show you what Anna really did.
Wyatt did not answer.
He showed Gabriel.
For the first time, he chose trust over fear.
Then the hospital laboratory called.
The new DNA results were ready.
Gabriel was Wyatt’s biological father.
The technician had not yet completed the sibling comparison.
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Before she could release the full report, the laboratory’s fire alarm activated and the connection ended.
👉 The first DNA result confirmed Gabriel was Wyatt’s father, but someone disrupted the laboratory before it could prove whether the boys shared the same mother.
