Chapter 6 - MY FATHER’S FROZEN ACCOUNTS
Robert ordered Mercer Medical Logistics to suspend every Ashford contract.
The independent board stopped him.
A full suspension would shut down three regional warehouses and jeopardize medical deliveries.
My father argued that Grant’s fraud made all contracts suspect.
The board required project-by-project review.
I supported the board.
Robert stared at me across the conference table.
“You asked me for help.”
“I did not ask you to endanger hospital deliveries.”
“His company cannot be trusted.”
“Then replace management without stopping insulin shipments.”
“You sound like him.”
The accusation cut.
Grant often called my father reckless with power.
Sometimes he was right.
I said:
“Precision is not betrayal.”
The board appointed Laurel Chen as temporary receiver over Ashford Development’s Mercer-linked projects.
Ordinary payroll continued.
Grant lost authority over extraordinary transactions.
Accounts connected to forged fees and clinic payments were restrained.
His personal checking account remained open for legal living expenses.
Publicly, he claimed my father had frozen everything.
That was false.
It was also widely believed.
My reporter statement continued hurting us.
Kelsey’s attorney argued I had created a hostile environment endangering her pregnancy.
The court ordered all parties to avoid public speculation about genetic parentage.
I complied.
Grant’s publicist did not.
Anonymous posts called my secret medical status a fake pregnancy invented to steal Kelsey’s child.
The posts included a photograph of me leaving the Paris clinic.
Only Grant’s investigator had that image.
Rebecca filed evidence-preservation motions rather than debating online.
The clinic investigation uncovered a whistleblower.
Sophie Lin, a laboratory embryologist, had questioned the missing specimen eighteen months earlier.
Martin Cole told her the patient authorized an anonymous donation.
Sophie asked for the consent form.
He showed her a scan carrying my signature.
She believed it.
Months later, she noticed the scan’s timestamp predated the printer used to create it.
She saved the barcode history.
Then Martin terminated her for “documentation failures.”
She filed no complaint because Grant’s company threatened to sue over confidential data.
Sophie gave police a copy of the original barcode trail.
It linked the transferred specimen to my cycle.
That still did not prove the embryo inside Kelsey was the same one.
Records could be mislabeled.
Chain of custody required more.
Sophie also saved an email from Martin to Grant.
The viable sample is available. Consent image attached. Carrier must begin medication within forty-eight hours.
Grant replied:
Proceed. Claire will never know there was anything to save.
The sentence destroyed his claim of innocent reliance.
Kelsey’s attorney requested another meeting.
She said Kelsey had not seen the email.
She believed the embryo came from an anonymous donor program after her own treatment failed.
“There was no donor program in her consent,” Rebecca said.
“Kelsey signed what Grant placed in front of her.”
“So did Claire.”
The comparison was uncomfortable.
Kelsey had mocked me and participated in public humiliation.
She might also have been deceived about the pregnancy inside her.
Her attorney offered preservation of ordinary prenatal blood samples for noninvasive kinship analysis if the court protected her privacy and prohibited public release.
The guardian ad litem agreed.
Testing would compare fetal markers only where medically and legally valid.
Before the lab began, Martin Cole was found at a motel near the Canadian border.
He had not fled the country.
He had been carrying an encrypted drive.
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The password hint was:
ELEANOR’S FIRST GRANDCHILD.
