Chapter 35 - Blood on the Lake
David didn't lower his guard. His hand remained buried in his coat pocket, locked on the grip of the Glock.
"Arthur Vance."
"That was my name before Evelyn buried me in a closed-casket funeral," the older man said, his voice carrying that same eerie genetic resonance David had heard over the phone. Arthur walked with a slight limp, his right shoulder pitched lower than the left. He wore a faded oilskin duster, heavily patched at the seams. "You brought the key?"
"I brought a gun," David replied evenly. "And five seconds before I decide whether to put a bullet through your shoulder. Start talking. Why did she fake your death?"
Arthur gave a dry, humorless chuckle that ended in a rattling cough. "You think she faked it? No, son. I helped her arrange it. Because in 2004, the things Evelyn and I had done were finally catching up to us. And only one of us could disappear."
David’s heart contracted. "What things?"
Arthur took another slow drag of his cigarette, his eyes drifting up toward the rotting rafters. "Your mother wasn't just mentally ill, David. That was the cover story her lawyers sold the jury to keep her out of a federal penitentiary. Evelyn was a broker. For thirty years, she operated an off-the-books adoption and surrogacy network for some of the wealthiest dynasties on the Eastern seaboard. She falsified infant death certificates, bought off corrupt state agencies, and provided 'clean' heirs to families who couldn't conceive."
A sickening coldness settled into the pit of David’s stomach. "Julian... and me?"
"You and Julian were real. You were her biological sons," Arthur said softly, his eyes returning to David’s face with something resembling pity. "She loved you in her own sick, possessive way. But your daughter, Maya?"
"What about Maya?" David’s voice dropped to a dangerous whisper.
"Maya isn't just your daughter, David," Arthur said, taking a step closer. "Look at her medical history. Look at the genetic anomalies Dr. Ross flagged during Leah's twenty-week scan. The blood disorder that required that specialized plasma transfusion right after birth?"
David remembered. The terrifying week when Maya’s white blood cells had crashed, and Evelyn had mysteriously appeared at the hospital with an anonymous, perfectly matched donor from an offshore clinic.
"What did she do to my daughter?" David demanded, his voice cracking with fury.
May you like
"She didn't do it to Maya," Arthur said, exhaling another cloud of gray smoke. "She did it to the mother of that donor thirty-five years ago. Maya’s genetic lineage holds the legal title to a forty-million-dollar maritime trust registered under the name of the girl Evelyn drowned in Lake Michigan in 1991. The girl we buried under the ice."
***
