Chapter 2 - The House Without a Mother
Caden’s home stood above the river behind black iron gates and enough security to protect a foreign embassy.
Elena almost refused to enter.
She sat in the back of the armored SUV with Isla asleep in her arms and the boys secured beside her in car seats. Caden sat opposite, speaking quietly into his phone while the city moved beyond tinted glass.
“Bellamy. Nurses, anesthesiologists, embryologists, accountants, cleaners. Anyone who worked there during the last two years.”
He listened.
“I don’t care if they moved countries.”
Another pause.
“No police yet.”
Elena looked up.
“No police?”
Caden ended the call.
“The police will alert whoever arranged this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know who Bellamy paid.”
“You had the clinic investigated?”
“I investigated everyone involved in bringing my children into the world.”
“Clearly not enough.”
The words came sharper than she intended.
Caden absorbed them without flinching.
“No,” he said. “Not enough.”
That unsettled her.
She had expected anger.
Men with power rarely admitted failure. They punished whoever stood nearest to it.
Luca began to fuss.
Elena placed two fingers in his small hand.
He quieted immediately.
Caden watched.
“How long have they done that?” she asked.
“Cried?”
“Like they’re afraid.”
His gaze went to the children.
“Since they came home.”
“How old were they?”
“Ten weeks.”
“They were hospitalized that long?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“St. Augustine’s neonatal unit.”
Elena’s pulse stumbled.
She had been on the fourth floor.
Maternity recovery.
The neonatal intensive care unit was on the sixth.
Two floors above her, while she grieved children she believed were dead, those children had been alive beneath warming lights.
“Did you visit them?”
“Every day.”
“Did anyone tell you their surrogate was in the building?”
“No.”
“What name was on the contract?”
Caden looked toward the window.
“Elena Maren.”
Her mother’s maiden name.
Elena had used it for three months after her mother’s diagnosis, when debt collectors began calling and she became afraid the clinic would reject her for financial desperation.
“How did you know her?” Elena asked.
“I didn’t.”
“You hired a stranger to carry three children.”
“I hired Bellamy to select a medically qualified surrogate.”
“Why triplets?”
“It wasn’t intended.”
The first transfer had failed.
The second had used two embryos.
According to Caden, one had split.
Two identical boys and one girl.
Elena remembered Dr. Bellamy laughing softly during the twelve-week ultrasound.
An unexpected blessing.
She had been terrified.
Three babies.
Three lives depending entirely on a body she had never trusted to do anything extraordinary.
She had placed her palm over the moving shadows on the monitor and promised strangers she would keep them safe.
“I need DNA tests,” Elena said.
“They’re already being arranged.”
“You took my medical records.”
“I obtained the hospital bloodwork Gary mentioned.”
“That is illegal.”
“So was telling both of us the other was dead.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No.”
Again, the answer without defense.
Elena looked at him.
“Do you always agree when someone accuses you?”
“Only when they’re correct.”
The gates opened.
The vehicle climbed a winding drive toward a stone house overlooking the river.
It was beautiful in the sterile way museums were beautiful. Vast windows. Pale walls. Black roof. No toys visible outside.
Inside was different.
A stuffed giraffe lay near the stairs. Bottles crowded the kitchen counter. One wall of the family room was covered in photographs of the triplets from their first day home.
Elena stopped in front of them.
Roman in a blue knitted hat.
Luca sleeping beneath a white blanket.
Isla’s fingers wrapped around Caden’s thumb.
Elena touched the edge of one frame.
She had received nothing.
No pictures.
No certificate.
No proof they had existed beyond the scars on her body.
A woman in navy scrubs hurried into the room.
“Mr. Voss.”
She looked at Elena, then at Isla sleeping against her.
Shock crossed her face.
“This is Dr. Mara Ellison,” Caden said. “The children’s pediatrician.”
Mara approached slowly.
“How long has she been holding Isla?”
“About forty minutes.”
“And Isla hasn’t cried?”
“No.”
The doctor looked at Elena.
“May I ask who you are?”
Elena could not answer.
Caden did.
“Their surrogate.”
Mara went still.
“I was told she died.”
“So was I.”
The doctor sat down.
Caden’s men entered carrying medical cases.
Elena looked at the needles.
“No.”
“Cheek swabs,” Mara said gently. “No needles.”
“Why test me if donor eggs were used?”
Caden’s gaze sharpened.
“Donor eggs?”
“My contract said donor embryos.”
His face changed.
“My embryos were created with my sperm and eggs from a donor selected through Bellamy.”
Elena frowned.
“That’s what I meant.”
But something in Caden’s expression remained wrong.
“What?” she asked.
“The donor was anonymous.”
“So?”
“I selected her profile.”
Elena felt unease tighten beneath her ribs.
Caden crossed to a locked drawer and removed a thin folder.
He handed Elena a photograph.
The woman pictured had hazel eyes, dark curls, and a narrow face.
Elena stared.
It was her.
Not a recent photograph. A college photograph taken seven years earlier for a student identification card.
Beneath it, the profile listed a different name.
Sophia Lane.
Age twenty-five.
Graduate degree in genetics.
Concert pianist.
No family history of cancer.
Elena’s hands began to shake.
“I never donated eggs.”
Mara looked from the profile to Elena.
“Then where did Bellamy get this photograph?”
“My university file.”
Caden’s voice turned flat.
“The clinic did not use donor eggs.”
Elena looked toward the triplets.
Roman had her mother’s ears.
Isla had the small cleft in her chin that Elena concealed with makeup.
Luca’s left hand curled inward when he slept, exactly as Elena’s had since childhood.
“No.”
She sat down because standing became impossible.
“They used mine?”
Mara took a careful breath.
“If the DNA confirms it, yes.”
Elena covered her mouth.
The children were not only the babies she had carried.
They were biologically hers.
Caden moved toward her, then stopped as though uncertain what comfort he had the right to offer.
Elena looked at him.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“You chose me.”
“I chose a fabricated profile.”
“Based on my face.”
“I chose based on medical history and stated education.”
“My mother died of breast cancer.”
“The profile said no cancer history.”
“I never played piano.”
“Elena—”
“Everything was a lie.”
“Yes.”
She stood.
Isla woke and tightened her arms around Elena’s neck.
The girl looked between the adults, sensing tension.
“Mama.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Caden’s phone rang.
He answered.
Ortega spoke loudly enough that Elena heard fragments.
Account.
Offshore.
Bellamy.
Monthly payments.
Caden’s expression darkened.
“From whom?”
A pause.
Then his eyes moved to Elena.
“Say the name again.”
He ended the call.
Elena held Isla closer.
“Who paid Bellamy?”
Caden did not answer.
“Who?”
“My father.”
The room went silent.
Elena knew little about Caden’s family.
His father, Adrian Voss, had built the empire Caden inherited. He had died five years earlier in what newspapers called a boating accident and everyone else called a correction.
“Why would your father pay a fertility doctor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he alive?”
“No.”
“How convenient.”
Caden’s gaze cooled.
“You think I killed him?”
“I think everyone in this city believes you did.”
“And what do you believe?”
“I’ve known you for one hour.”
“Long enough to accuse me.”
“Long enough to know you had my records stolen.”
He stepped closer.
“And long enough for you to trust me with your body when you collapsed.”
Elena’s face heated.
“I trusted gravity less.”
A faint sound came from Mara.
Caden looked at her.
The doctor studied the floor.
One of the men entered with sealed swab kits.
Caden gestured toward the dining table.
They took the samples.
Elena first.
Then Caden.
Then each child.
Isla tried to bite the swab.
Roman laughed.
The sound startled everyone.
Caden looked at his son.
“How often does he laugh?” Elena asked.
“Not often.”
Roman held out the wet swab triumphantly.
Elena smiled despite herself.
Caden watched her smile as though it were another piece of evidence.
Mara sealed the samples.
“I’ll have results within six hours.”
“Two,” Caden said.
“That isn’t medically—”
“Two.”
Mara looked at Elena.
“Four,” Elena said.
Caden’s eyes narrowed.
“Why four?”
“Because threatening the laboratory won’t make the machines run faster.”
Mara hid another smile.
“Four,” Caden agreed.
The triplets were hungry.
The nanny prepared bottles, but all three refused them.
Elena sat on the nursery rug with Roman in her lap, Luca against one side, and Isla pressed against the other.
“Let me try.”
She held the bottle to Roman.
He watched her face while drinking.
Then Luca accepted his.
Isla crawled across Elena’s legs, placed one hand over Elena’s collarbone, and took the bottle without looking away.
Caden stood in the doorway.
He looked out of place in the soft room.
“Come sit,” Elena said.
His expression hardened instinctively.
It was the tone, she realized.
A command.
Nobody commanded Caden Voss.
Elena shifted Isla.
“Or keep standing like a haunted coat rack.”
Caden entered.
He sat on the rug across from her.
The children watched him.
“Talk to them,” Elena said.
“I talk to them.”
“Not like an employer.”
His gaze sharpened.
Elena nodded toward Roman.
“Tell him something true.”
Caden looked at his son.
“I bought the eastern shipping terminal when I was twenty-seven.”
Elena stared.
“That’s what you chose?”
“It is true.”
“Try something they care about.”
Caden remained silent.
Roman drank slowly.
Finally, Caden spoke.
“I was afraid when you were born.”
Elena looked up.
Caden’s attention remained on the boy.
“You were small enough to fit along my forearm. There were tubes everywhere. I thought touching you would hurt you.”
Roman stopped drinking.
Caden continued.
“So I stood beside the glass and told myself waiting was protecting you.”
Luca turned toward his father’s voice.
“It wasn’t,” Caden said. “I should have touched you.”
Elena’s throat tightened.
Isla released the bottle.
She crawled from Elena’s lap to Caden’s.
He froze.
The girl climbed unsteadily against his chest and rested her head beneath his chin.
Caden did not move for several seconds.
Then his arms closed around her.
His eyes shut.
A man who controlled ports and judges bent his head over a fourteen-month-old child and looked afraid to breathe.
Elena understood then.
He had not brought the triplets to the diner because he wanted to display them.
He had brought them because every nanny had quit, the pediatric nurse had called in sick, and he had no idea what else to do.
He was not a helpless father.
He was a father helpless in one specific way.
Love did not obey him.
The laboratory called three hours and forty-seven minutes later.
Mara answered on speaker.
“The probability of Caden Voss being the biological father of all three children exceeds 99.99 percent.”
Elena held her breath.
“The probability of Elena Voss being the biological mother also exceeds 99.99 percent.”
Elena looked at Caden.
Mara continued.
“They are your children. Both of yours.”
Caden’s gaze dropped to Isla asleep in his arms.
Elena felt the world divide into before and after.
Then Ortega entered the nursery carrying a photograph.
“Sir, we found Bellamy.”
Caden stood carefully, handing Isla to Elena.
“Where?”
“Not Bellamy himself. His body.”
Elena went cold.
“Where was he found?”
May you like
Ortega placed the photograph facedown on the dresser.
“In your father’s mausoleum.”
