Chapter 3 - THE SIGNATURE
Adrian could hear Noah breathing behind him.
Nothing else seemed real.
He held the medical report so tightly the paper bent.
"Mom."
Victoria did not move.
"Tell me this is fake."
"It is incomplete."
"That is not what I asked."
Her hands trembled.
"Celeste bled for forty-seven minutes before they operated."
"You know nothing about that night."
"I know my sister died."
"And I know Victoria was listed as emergency medical proxy because Adrian was unreachable during the storm."
His helicopter had been grounded.
His phone had lost service on the highway.
By the time he reached the hospital, Celeste was already in surgery.
Victoria had been waiting in the hall.
She had hugged him and said the doctors had done everything they could.
Adrian looked sick.
"Why did you refuse?"
"The first procedure endangered Noah."
"So you chose my son over my wife?"
"I chose the Walker heir."
Emma made a broken sound.
"She had a name."
"She knew what this family required."
"She was my wife."
"And Noah was the future."
Adrian slammed the report onto the table.
"You do not get to say his name like you saved him."
Noah began crying.
Emma immediately knelt and gathered him into her arms.
Victoria watched them with disgust.
"This is what I warned you about."
"No. This is what Celeste warned me about."
Gabriel removed a small flash drive from his pocket.
"Celeste found more than medical records."
"You knew my sister?"
"She found me three years ago."
"Three years?"
"Before Noah was born."
He placed the drive beside the report.
"She was investigating the Walker family."
Victoria lunged for it.
The room went silent again.
"Do not," Adrian said.
Gabriel plugged the drive into the laptop on the desk.
A video appeared.
Adrian's father, Charles Walker, sat in a dark office.
"If Adrian sees this," Charles said, "then I failed to get out in time."
Adrian stopped breathing.
His father had died in a car crash six years earlier.
Charles looked directly into the camera.
"The Walker fortune was not built."
May you like
He paused.
"It was taken."
