Chapter 2 - THE BROTHER’S DEBTI left Mrs. Harlow trembling by the console and took the stairs two at a time, my fury carrying me up to the landing before Ethan could turn back toward his quarters.
"What did you say?" I demanded, closing the distance between us until I was standing inches from his chest.
Ethan didn't flinch. He adjusted the lapel of his silk robe with casual arrogance, his dark eyes—eyes that shared none of the gray-blue hue of mine or the newborn downstairs—glinting with malice.
"I said," Ethan repeated, enunciating every word with deliberate cruelty, "that you were a fool to trust Zurich. You really thought a vault full of frozen cells in Switzerland was safe from someone who knows every password you've ever used since college?"
My fist clenched so hard my fingernails bit into my palm. "You hacked the Zurich facility? How? That requires dual-key authentication and biometric clearance!"
"It requires a desperate brother with a mountain of gambling debts and a corrupt insider at the Swiss biomedical firm," Ethan laughed softly, leaning against the polished banister. "Do you have any idea how much venture capital firms and black-market fertility brokers are willing to pay for premium, genetically screened, pre-cancer-cleared genetic material from a billionaire tech mogul? They don't just want babies, Julian. They want successors. And you were sitting on a goldmine of frozen potential while telling yourself you were permanently broken."
The words hit me like a physical blow. All those years I had believed my body was a dead end, a biological trap engineered by cancer and aggressive medical intervention, my own brother had been eyeing my genetic catalog like livestock at an auction.
"You sold my samples?" I whispered, the rage inside me freezing into a terrifying, lethal calm. "You commercialized my DNA?"
"Not just commercialized," Ethan corrected, his smile widening. "Leveraged. I partnered with a private fertility clinic in Boston—NovaGenics—run by a brilliant, ruthless endocrinologist named Dr. Elena Vance—no relation, thankfully. We created a portfolio of high-grade embryos. Most were sold off to anonymous high-net-worth clients across Europe and Asia to pay off my debts to the syndicate. But this one... this one was different."
My stomach tightened. "What are you talking about?"
"NovaGenics kept a control sample," Ethan said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "A master blueprint. And when my creditors in Chicago started threatening to break my legs if I didn't clear my two-million-dollar balance by the end of the month, I realized I needed insurance. I needed a trump card that would force you to bail me out, or better yet, hand over control of the holding company so I could liquidate the assets."
"So you staged a drop," I realized, the pieces snapping together with terrifying clarity. "You had someone leave my biological son by my own gates, attached to a letter that would blow my world apart."
"I didn't expect the homeless kid to find him first," Ethan admitted, rolling his eyes with mild annoyance. "The courier was supposed to leave him directly on the front porch and ring the bell. That brat Mia must have been scavenging early. But honestly? It adds a wonderful layer of dramatic irony, doesn't it?"
Before Ethan could finish his sentence, I lunged forward, grabbing him by the silk collar and slamming him hard against the oak wall of the hallway. The decorative wall sconce rattled violently, showering plaster dust onto the carpet.
"You used a newborn baby as a pawn," I snarled, my face inches from his. "You played with an innocent child’s life just to clear your debts?"
"Careful, brother," Ethan wheezed, though his eyes still flashed with defiant arrogance. "If you hurt me, or if you call the police before I transfer the decryption keys to NovaGenics' master server, you'll never find out who the mother is. Because guess what? That baby wasn't grown in a petri dish with a nameless surrogate. He was carried by someone very specific. Someone you used to know very well."
I froze. My grip on his collar loosened by a fraction of an inch.
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"What did you say?"
Ethan smirked, wiping a speck of dust off his robe. "Ask Mrs. Harlow. She didn't just help manage this house. She helped pack away your old life twelve years ago. And she knew exactly whose eggs were stored right beside yours in that Zurich vault before you even got sick."
