Chapter 5 - The Stolen Medical Vault
Sebastian brought us to his personal penthouse overlooking Lake Michigan—a fortress equipped with private elevator access, biometric security, and round-the-clock guards.
While the triplets were tucked into the guest suite watching cartoons with warm cups of hot chocolate, Sebastian and I sat across from each other in his cavernous study. Marcus Vance arrived thirty minutes later, slamming a heavy leather briefcase onto the glass desk.
“We have a problem,” Marcus announced, pulling out a series of stamped affidavits. “Olivia’s family has deep ties to the county medical examiner’s division. The original delivery records from St. Jude’s Hospital—the ones that prove Hannah gave birth to live triplets—were moved to an off-site archive three years ago. When my investigator went to pull them today, the box was marked 'destroyed by water damage'.”
I buried my face in my hands. “They sanitized everything. Even the birth certificates I obtained in Iowa don't have a father’s signature because Sebastian wasn't there. In court, Olivia’s lawyers will claim I used a fertility clinic or another man’s sample!”
“They won’t,” Sebastian said, his voice deadly calm.
He stood up, walked over to a floor-to-ceiling painting on the far wall, and swung it open to reveal a heavy biometric wall safe. He entered an eight-digit code and placed his thumb on the scanner. The heavy steel door clicked open.
From the safe, Sebastian pulled out a small, worn velvet box and a thick manila folder wrapped in faded ribbon.
“What is that?” I asked.
Sebastian laid the folder before me. Inside were dozens of handwritten journal entries, dated between five years ago and today.
“When my mother told me you lost the babies,” Sebastian said, his voice thick with unhealed grief, “she wanted to cremate everything in the nursery. She wanted to throw away the cribs, the blankets, the ultrasound scans. I refused. I took the original amniocentesis genetic profile from your twenty-week checkup—the one the hospital sent directly to my private office before you went into labor.”
Marcus gasped. “The hospital sent a certified prenatal genetic panel?”
“Yes,” Sebastian whispered, looking directly into my eyes. “I kept it in my private safe for five years because it was the only piece of my children I thought I had left. It contains their complete fetal DNA markers, certified by the chief of genetics at Northwestern Memorial.”
Marcus immediately pulled out a sterile buccal swab kit from his briefcase. “Sebastian, if we swab your cheek right now, and swab the triplets in the next room, we don't need St. Jude’s destroyed archives. We can run an expedited six-hour comparative sequencing against the prenatal markers already filed in your private vault.”
“Do it,” Sebastian said without a second’s hesitation. He took the swab, scraped the inside of his cheek, and sealed it in the sterile vial.
As Marcus walked out to collect samples from the sleeping children, Sebastian stepped closer to where I sat.
“Hannah... I found something else in my mother’s private correspondence when I went through her estate office this afternoon,” he said, pulling an audio cassette tape from his pocket. “Olivia didn't act alone. My mother promised Olivia a thirty percent stake in the Carter Shipping line if she successfully pushed you out and married me.”
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I looked up at him, the pain of five years of solitude finally breaking through my defenses. “You let them do it, Sebastian. You let your wealth blind you to who they really were.”
“I was a coward,” he admitted, dropping his head. “I trusted the people who raised me instead of the woman who loved me. But I am going to make Olivia Bennett and my mother pay for every single tear my children cried without a father.”
