Chapter 5 - The Baby In 2000
Adrian did not ask the question immediately.
He stood in the middle of the ballroom with his phone still in his hand and stared at his parents as though he were waiting for one of them to laugh.
No one did.
Adrian's birthday had always been one of Victoria's favorite family stories.
She told it every March with small variations designed to make the danger sound greater and her devotion sound more heroic.
There had been an emergency surgery.
Victoria's fabricated birth story had shaped Adrian's personality in ways nobody noticed until it cracked.
He hated hospitals because he believed his birth nearly killed his mother.
He sent Victoria flowers every year on his birthday because she told him it was also the anniversary of her survival.
At sixteen, he once canceled a trip because Victoria said anniversaries made her anxious.
Those choices had been sincere even though the reason beneath them was false.
Ava could see Adrian recalculating entire years in seconds.
The cruelty was not only that Victoria lied about biology.
She had converted the lie into obligations Adrian carried willingly because he thought gratitude required them.
There had been a doctor who warned Richard to prepare for the worst.
There had been a nurse who supposedly placed newborn Adrian against Victoria's chest and said he had his mother's eyes.
Ava had heard the story twice and never questioned it.
Adrian had heard it his entire life.
Now the hospital paper in his hand erased the foundation beneath that memory without erasing the emotional weight built on top of it.
That was the cruelty of manufactured family history.
The events could be false while the feelings created around them remained completely real.
Victoria had held him when he was sick.
Richard had taught him to drive.
They had attended school conferences and graduations and funerals.
Nothing on the birth record changed those facts.
The record changed what those facts meant.
Ava could see Adrian struggling with that distinction in real time.
He was not simply learning that Victoria had not given birth to him.
He was learning that every time she told the story, she consciously renewed the lie.
That repetition made the deception feel less like one desperate choice made in 2000 and more like thousands of choices made afterward.
Ava understood why his anger had nowhere clean to land.
Victoria's face had become gray beneath her makeup.
Richard looked furious rather than frightened now, which Ava had already learned was how he looked when fear cornered him.
Dominic was the only one who seemed to understand the shape of the silence.
Adrian finally spoke.
"What baby?"
Victoria opened her mouth.
Richard cut her off.
"This is nonsense."
Adrian turned toward him.
"He said to ask you what happened to the baby in 2000."
"Miles is unstable."
"Miles has driven me to school, college, court, funerals, and every board meeting I've attended since I was twelve."
"That does not make him stable."
"It makes him someone you trusted with your life."
Richard's eyes hardened.
"And now I don't."
Ava watched Victoria.
The older woman's hands were shaking.
She tucked them behind her back.
Ava moved closer to Adrian.
"Ask her."
Victoria glared at her.
"Stay out of this."
Ava's cheek still throbbed beneath the three red marks Victoria had left there.
"You made me part of it the moment you hit me."
Victoria looked away.
Adrian stepped toward his mother.
"What happened in 2000?"
Victoria whispered his name.
"Adrian."
"Tell me."
"Not here."
He laughed once.
"You too?"
She flinched.
Richard moved in front of her.
"We are leaving."
Adrian did not move.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"You are my son."
The words landed strangely.
Dominic's expression changed.
Ava noticed.
"Dad?"
Dominic did not answer.
Adrian noticed too.
"Why did you look at him like that?"
Dominic exhaled slowly.
"Because there are records you need to see before anyone gives you an explanation."
Richard's voice sharpened.
"You have no right."
Dominic turned toward him.
"Neither did you."
Ava's stomach tightened.
"What records?"
Dominic reached for the leather case carried by his attorney.
She hesitated.
"Mr. Vale, are you sure?"
"No."
He took the case anyway.
Richard moved forward.
Two security officers stepped subtly between them.
Richard stopped.
Dominic opened the case and removed a clear evidence sleeve.
Inside was a photocopy of a hospital form faded around the edges.
He handed it to Adrian.
Adrian stared at the page.
Ava watched his eyes move down the lines.
His expression changed when he reached the mother's name.
"Leah Carter."
The name meant nothing to Ava.
It meant something to Victoria.
Her knees almost buckled.
Richard caught her elbow.
Adrian looked up.
"Who is Leah Carter?"
No one answered.
He looked back at the page.
"Male infant, born March 18, 2000."
His voice weakened.
"That's my birthday."
Ava felt a chill move through her.
Adrian turned the page over as if the truth might be hiding on the back.
"Mother, Leah Carter."
He looked at Victoria.
"Your name isn't here."
Victoria started crying without making a sound.
That frightened Ava more than if she had screamed.
"Tell him."
Dominic's voice was hard.
Richard pointed at him.
"You do not speak to my wife."
"Then you speak to your son."
Adrian looked at Richard.
"Am I your son?"
Richard hesitated.
That hesitation broke something.
Adrian stepped backward.
"Oh my God."
Victoria reached for him.
He pulled away.
"Don't touch me."
She froze.
"Please."
"Who is Leah Carter?"
Victoria's lips trembled.
"She was young."
Adrian stared at her.
"That is not an answer."
"She worked at Meridian."
Dominic nodded once.
"Accounts payable."
Ava turned toward him.
"You knew her?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I did not know what happened to her child until years later."
Adrian's gaze snapped back to Dominic.
"What happened to her?"
Dominic's jaw tightened.
"She disappeared six weeks after the warehouse fire."
Victoria covered her mouth.
Adrian went perfectly still.
"Disappeared?"
Richard intervened.
"She left the country."
Dominic looked at him.
"That is what you told the police."
"Because it was true."
"Then show us the passport record."
Richard said nothing.
Dominic continued.
"Show us the ticket."
Silence.
"Show us one photograph of Leah Carter alive after May 2, 2000."
Richard's face darkened.
Adrian looked sick.
Ava reached for his hand.
For a second, he let her hold it.
Then he pulled away.
Not angrily.
Instinctively.
The distance hurt more because she understood it.
Everything familiar had become suspicious to him.
Ava looked at the hospital record again.
A handwritten line near the bottom caught her attention.
"What does this say?"
Dominic leaned closer.
"Temporary guardian placement."
"With whom?"
The copy was blurred.
The attorney opened the case again.
"There is a cleaner scan."
She handed Dominic a tablet.
He enlarged the document.
The line became legible.
TEMPORARY GUARDIAN: VICTORIA ELAINE HALSTON.
Adrian stopped breathing.
Victoria whispered his name again.
"I loved you from the first day."
He looked at her with tears in his eyes.
"You told me you almost died giving birth to me."
Victoria cried harder.
"I wanted you to feel wanted."
"So you invented a pregnancy?"
"I wanted you to be mine."
"Was I adopted?"
She looked at Richard.
Adrian followed her gaze.
"Was I legally adopted?"
Richard's silence answered first.
Dominic looked at the attorney.
She opened another sleeve.
"We have not located a final adoption decree."
Adrian gave a short, broken laugh.
"Of course you haven't."
Ava's mind raced.
No adoption decree meant more than a family lie.
It meant identity documents might have been falsified.
It meant inheritance rights could be different.
It meant every document Adrian had signed as a Halston heir could become a legal battlefield.
Richard seemed to read the same calculation in her face.
"Do not even think about it."
Ava looked at him.
"About what?"
"Using this against him."
Adrian turned toward his father.
"You don't get to protect me now."
"Everything I did was to protect you."
"From what?"
Richard's voice dropped.
"From the people in this room."
Dominic almost smiled.
"You stole a child and called it protection."
Richard lunged.
Security caught him before he reached Dominic.
Guests scattered backward.
Victoria screamed Richard's name.
Ava stepped in front of her father.
Adrian stood frozen.
Richard struggled once, then stopped.
His eyes found Adrian.
"Do not believe him."
Adrian's face was pale.
"Then tell me who my father is."
Richard's expression changed.
There it was again.
The hesitation.
The impossible pause before an answer that should have been automatic.
Adrian whispered the question again.
"Who is my father?"
Richard looked at Dominic.
Dominic looked away.
Ava understood that her father knew something else.
"Dad."
Dominic closed his eyes briefly.
"The birth certificate lists no father."
Adrian swallowed.
"That's not what I asked."
Dominic opened his eyes.
"I know."
Before he could continue, the ballroom doors opened again.
A police detective entered with two uniformed officers.
The hotel manager followed them.
The detective scanned the room.
"I'm looking for Richard Halston."
Richard's face became unreadable.
The detective held up a plastic evidence bag.
Inside was a blackened license plate.
"We recovered this from the burned archive truck."
He looked at Richard.
"The truck was registered to a company owned by your executive driver."
Adrian went still.
"Miles?"
The detective nodded.
"And we found blood in the cab."
Victoria made a strangled sound.
Ava felt Adrian's hand find hers again.
May you like
This time, he held on.
