Chapter 3 - Someone Wanted Ethan’s Blood
The first person Adrian suspected was his head of security.
The second was his attorney.
The third was everyone else.
That was Adrian.
Trust had never come naturally to him, which was ironic considering the number of secrets people had managed to keep anyway.
His Los Angeles residence was placed under internal lockdown while investigators reviewed access logs. The false paternity document had been uploaded through an administrative computer inside a restricted study. Only eight people could enter that room without triggering security alerts.
Adrian.
His attorney, Simon Wells.
Security chief Cole Mercer.
House manager Evelyn Price.
His uncle Marcus.
Three senior business officers.
And Adrian’s grandmother, who was ninety-two and reportedly believed computers were a communist plot.
“Probably not your grandmother,” I said.
Adrian looked at me.
“She once hit a federal agent with a handbag.”
“Still.”
“Fair.”
For a few minutes, we almost sounded like the people we had been before fear destroyed everything.
Then Ethan’s monitor beeped, and reality returned.
He improved throughout the afternoon. Doctors confirmed that the dangerous substance in his system was small enough that they could not determine whether exposure had been accidental. But the timing, the forged records, and the Blackwood trust made accidental feel increasingly unlikely.
Detective Chen obtained school surveillance.
At 10:38 that morning, a man wearing a delivery uniform entered the administration building.
He carried a box addressed to the school nurse.
Inside were promotional samples from a children’s wellness company.
Vitamin drinks.
Bandages.
Informational brochures.
Nothing obviously suspicious.
The nurse never gave Ethan any of it.
Then another camera showed the man walking toward the cafeteria instead of leaving.
Seven minutes disappeared because one camera happened to be offline.
When he reappeared, he no longer carried the delivery box.
The police were tracing him.
Adrian watched the footage three times.
“I know him.”
I turned.
“Who?”
“Not his name.”
“Then how?”
“He worked security at Marcus’s foundation gala last winter.”
Detective Chen looked at him.
“You're certain?”
“Yes.”
“Why remember a contract guard?”
“He watched my hands instead of my face.”
Chen waited.
Adrian shrugged.
“Men expecting trouble watch hands.”
Another detail from a world I had wanted Ethan nowhere near.
Police identified the man by evening.
Jonah Rusk.
Former private security contractor.
Worked three events for Marcus Blackwood.
No current address.
Phone disconnected.
Vehicle registered to a shell company.
Detective Chen became noticeably less skeptical of the family conspiracy.
Then a hospital technician entered Ethan’s room carrying a cart.
Routine.
Except Adrian stood immediately.
“What?”
I whispered.
“That man doesn't belong here.”
“How do you know?”
“He keeps looking at the door.”
The technician stopped.
His hand tightened around the cart.
Adrian moved before anyone else.
Not violently.
He simply stepped between the man and Ethan.
“Badge.”
The technician stared.
“Sir?”
“Show me your hospital badge.”
A nurse looked up.
The man backed away.
Then ran.
Hospital security intercepted him near the stairwell.
Inside the cart, police later found nothing obviously dangerous.
But he had no hospital credentials.
No employment record.
And one thing in his pocket.
A specimen transport tube labeled:
ETHAN BENNETT.
Empty.
Someone wanted Ethan’s blood.
Not to hurt him this time.
To prove something.
Adrian’s face went dark when Chen told us.
“DNA.”
“Yes.”
“You think Marcus needs independent confirmation.”
“Possibly.”
“Then he doesn't trust the forged record.”
“Or someone else doesn't.”
That mattered.
The conspiracy might not be one person.
By midnight, Ethan was awake enough to complain about hospital pudding.
Good sign.
Adrian sat beside him reading from a dinosaur encyclopedia.
Badly.
“That’s not how you say Parasaurolophus,” Ethan informed him.
Adrian stared.
“You’re seven.”
“And you're wrong.”
I covered a smile.
Adrian tried again.
Worse.
Ethan groaned.
“You need practice.”
“I have excellent lawyers.”
“They can't help.”
“Story of my life.”
I watched them.
Father and son.
Same dark eyes.
Same stubborn expression.
Same need to win conversations nobody else realized were competitions.
Seven years stolen by fear.
I had to look away.
Later, Ethan slept.
Adrian found me in the family waiting room.
“You think I blame you.”
“Don't you?”
“Yes.”
At least he was honest.
“But not for everything.”
“What does that mean?”
He sat opposite me.
“I blame you for not calling me.”
“I believed Marcus.”
“I know.”
“I was twenty-five and pregnant and suddenly being followed.”
His expression sharpened.
“Followed?”
“You didn't know?”
“No.”
“Two cars. One near work. One outside my apartment.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I tried.”
I pulled the memory out like glass.
“I called your office six times. Your assistant said you were unavailable.”
“Which assistant?”
“Damian.”
Adrian’s face changed.
“Damian Cross?”
“Yes.”
“He worked for Marcus.”
My stomach dropped.
“I emailed you.”
“I never received anything.”
“Letters.”
“No.”
“Then Marcus showed me photographs of a farmhouse in Nevada.”
Adrian went still.
“What farmhouse?”
“He said that's where women were taken when they became problems.”
Adrian’s face became pale.
“That property belonged to my father.”
“I knew.”
“No. Natalie.”
He leaned forward.
“It was a witness safe house.”
I stared.
“What?”
“My father used it to hide people who were leaving dangerous situations connected to our organization.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Marcus said—”
“Marcus used something protective and made it look like a threat.”
Everything I had believed shifted.
Adrian continued.
“The recording he played you. ‘Once the child is born, the problem disappears.’ I was talking to my father about removing Marcus from succession control after I produced an heir.”
“You knew I was pregnant?”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“I was discussing a hypothetical future.”
That was cruelly ironic.
Marcus heard the same words and weaponized them against the woman already carrying the child that would make them true.
“What happened after I left?”
Adrian’s voice quieted.
“I searched.”
My eyes filled.
“For how long?”
“Three years aggressively. Longer privately.”
I stared.
“I changed my name.”
“I know now.”
“I moved four times.”
“I know.”
“You never found me.”
“No.”
Something vulnerable crossed his face.
“I thought you were better at disappearing than I was at finding.”
I almost laughed.
Instead, I cried.
He did not touch me.
That mattered.
“Why stop?”
“I didn't.”
He looked toward Ethan’s room.
“I stopped using people who might frighten you if they found you. I kept one investigator looking through public records.”
“Why didn't he find Ethan?”
“You didn't list a father.”
“No.”
“And apparently Marcus had access to some of the same searches.”
My chest tightened.
Then Adrian’s phone buzzed.
A photograph arrived from his security team.
Someone had searched Marcus Blackwood’s home office under a police warrant related to the forged paternity document.
They found photographs of Ethan.
School.
Park.
Grocery store.
At least six months of surveillance.
I stared.
“He knew.”
“Yes.”
“Why wait until now?”
Adrian swiped to the next image.
A document.
Blackwood Family Trust.
A highlighted clause.
Adrian read it once.
Then again.
“What?”
I asked.
His voice dropped.
“The trust doesn't activate when my child is publicly acknowledged.”
“What activates it?”
“When biological paternity is medically verified.”
I looked toward Ethan’s room.
His hospital bloodwork had done exactly that.
The moment the Blackwood Protocol recognized Ethan, the trust automatically recognized him too.
May you like
Seven years of hiding had ended in one blood test.
And by sunrise, Ethan Bennett would legally become the most valuable child in the Blackwood empire.
