Chapter 4 - The Birth CertificateIndependent laboratories collected fresh DNA samples from Mara and Adrian.
No one trusted the hospital archive.
Until results arrived, Mara refused to discuss the birth certificate as fact. Beatrice’s network had forged consent forms, medical authorizations, and camera records. A paper could be designed to break the couple apart just as easily as it could expose the truth.
But Beatrice’s reaction remained impossible to dismiss.
She had recognized the document.
Adrian demanded answers.
“Who was my biological father?”
Beatrice’s attorney advised silence.
Adrian shouted until the ICU monitor beside Mara’s bed began alarming again.
Mara looked at him coldly.
“Stop.”
He froze.
Even now, his fear filled the room more loudly than her pain.
Adrian stepped away from the bed.
“I’m sorry.”
Not for the affair.
Not for the divorce papers.
Only for raising his voice near the monitors.
Mara turned toward Selene.
“Did Beatrice ever ask about my father?”
Selene hesitated.
During her early work for the Holloway Foundation, she had been hired to organize private genetic records. One file compared Adrian, Mara, and several preserved embryos.
Selene assumed it was part of the transplant search.
“You saw our DNA before the wedding?”
“I saw labels. Not names.”
“Did Beatrice introduce you to Adrian before or after that?”
“After.”
Beatrice had placed both women in Adrian’s life for reasons neither understood fully.
Mara was the regenerative donor.
Selene was the gestational carrier.
Adrian was the bridge between the Vale biology and Holloway fortune.
The marriage, affair, pregnancy, and illness formed a single design.
The independent DNA result arrived six hours later.
Mara and Adrian were not siblings.
They shared no paternal relationship.
The birth certificate was false.
Adrian exhaled in relief.
Mara felt none.
Someone had created the document and hidden it beneath Elise’s chart for a reason.
Dr. Grant examined the original paper.
The certificate was printed thirty-eight years earlier, but the father’s name had been altered more recently. Chemical testing showed Richard Holloway’s name had been removed and Jonathan Vale inserted.
Beatrice stared at the result.
“You believed Jonathan was listed?” Mara asked.
“I believed Richard destroyed the original.”
“So Richard was Adrian’s father.”
“Yes.”
“Why forge Jonathan’s name?”
“To prevent Adrian from marrying you.”
Mara looked at her.
“You arranged our meeting.”
“I arranged a business introduction, not a marriage.”
“Selene said you compared our genetics before the wedding.”
Beatrice closed her eyes.
Richard Holloway had created the original Vale-Holloway continuity plan. He wanted Adrian to marry Mara and combine both companies through children.
Beatrice initially supported it.
Then she discovered Richard had secretly altered fertility and inheritance records to give himself control over every potential descendant.
She tried to stop the marriage without exposing the family’s illegal research.
The forged birth certificate was meant to be revealed if Adrian proposed.
But Richard’s attorney intercepted it.
“Why not tell us the truth?” Adrian asked.
“Because truth would have exposed the embryo archive.”
“What embryo archive?”
Beatrice looked toward Selene.
The unborn child was not created naturally.
Selene insisted she and Adrian had conceived during their affair.
Her prenatal records showed fertility treatment she did not remember receiving. During a minor procedure arranged by Beatrice’s clinic, an embryo had been implanted without full disclosure.
The fetus’s genetic profile did not match Adrian.
It matched Richard Holloway.
Selene was carrying the child of a man declared dead twelve years earlier.
The baby was Adrian’s half-sibling.
Selene pressed her hands over her belly.
“You told me it was his.”
“I told you the child belonged to the family.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“To me, it was.”
Adrian looked at his mother with revulsion.
“You used all of us.”
Beatrice faced Mara.
“And your father began it.”
Dr. Grant found another file in the underground laboratory.
The Vale-Holloway continuity agreement carried four signatures:
Jonathan Vale.
Richard Holloway.
Beatrice Holloway.
Elise Vale.
Mara’s mother had not been a helpless hidden patient when the program began.
She had helped create it.
Before Mara could process that revelation, security located Elise’s transport vehicle near the abandoned Vale Therapeutics campus.
The rear door was open.
Blood marked the floor.
There were two sets of footprints leading into the building.
One belonged to Elise.
The other belonged to the man who had removed Mara’s liver tissue.
May you like
Dr. Malcolm Sayer.
👉 Elise had helped create the same program that later stole Mara’s liver, and she had fled with the surgeon carrying the missing tissue.
