Chapter 3 - THE EMBRYO TRADE
The words hung in the air of the ICU room, thick, toxic, and impossible to comprehend.
She sold my embryo to him.
I stood up slowly, backing away from the bed until my back hit the wall. The ICU nurse, who had been trying to adjust Claire’s IV monitor, stopped dead in her tracks, her hands freezing mid-air, her mouth slightly open as she listened to my wife’s confession.
“Sold?” I repeated, the word sounding entirely foreign, like a term from a distantly translated language. “What do you mean, sold?”
Claire squeezed her eyes shut, heavy tears streaming down her pale temples into her hair.
“Seven years, Ethan,” she wept, her voice trembling violently. “Seven years of failing. We were out of money. We had liquidated our savings, taken out a second mortgage on the house, and your mother refused to loan us a single cent unless we used her personal physician at the Sterling Reproductive Center—the clinic Arthur Sterling built.”
I remembered that day three years ago. I had begged my mother for a loan to cover our third IVF cycle. She had refused, calling our quest for a child an "expensive, unnatural obsession"—until suddenly, six months later, she changed her mind. She offered to cover the entire thirty-thousand-dollar fee for a fourth cycle, on one strict condition: we had to transfer our care to the high-tech, private Sterling Reproductive Clinic downtown.
“When we went in for the egg retrieval eight months ago,” Claire continued, her chest heaving, “Dr. Vance—Arthur’s personal embryologist—retrieved fourteen viable eggs from my ovaries. They fertilized them using your sperm sample. But three days later, while you were away in Chicago for your engineering conference...”
She paused, choking on a sob, her hands clutching her chest.
“Your mother came to my house. She brought Arthur Sterling’s private attorney.”
My teeth ground together so hard my jaw muscles cracked. “What did they do to you, Claire?”
“They told me that Arthur Sterling’s only son had died in a car accident two months earlier,” Claire whispered, her eyes wide with lingering trauma. “They said Arthur needed a male heir to secure his family trust and keep his corporate board from liquidating his holdings. Your mother... she offered them an arrangement.”
I felt a cold, murderous rage blooming behind my ribs, spreading like poison through my veins. “An arrangement.”
“Dr. Vance took one of our healthiest fertilized embryos—a male embryo—and segregated it in the lab,” Claire sobbed. “They told me that if I agreed to act as a surrogate for Arthur Sterling’s male embryo while simultaneously transferring your embryo, your mother would pay off our mortgage, clear all our debt, and ensure our family was set up for life.”
“And if you said no?” I asked, my voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
Claire looked up at me, her blue eyes filled with sheer, unadulterated devastation.
“They said if I refused, your mother would use her legal influence to declare me mentally unfit due to my history of severe depression after the miscarriages. They said they would ensure you were ruined financially, that your engineering license was revoked through false ethics complaints, and that I would never be allowed to adopt or undergo fertility treatment anywhere in the country.”
She reached out her pale hands toward me, pleadingly.
“I was terrified, Ethan! I was broken! I wanted a baby so badly, and they cornered me in our own kitchen! Your mother swore to me that the transfer would only involve one embryo—Arthur’s male embryo. She said they would hold our remaining embryos in cryo-storage until after Arthur’s child was born, and then we could have our own family!”
“Then how did Lily get there?” I screamed, gesturing frantically toward the hallway where our daughter was being guarded by police officers. “How are there two babies?”
Claire covered her face with her hands, weeping hysterically.
“Because on the day of the transfer, I couldn't do it!” she cried out. “When I was lying on that table, looking at the screen, I panicked! While Dr. Vance was preparing the catheter, I begged the lab assistant—a young woman who knew what they were doing was illegal—to swap the vials! I begged her to load our original embryo alongside Arthur’s!”
I stared at her, my mind spinning violently.
Heteropaternal superfecundation—not through an act of infidelity, but through an act of desperate, clandestine defiance on an operating table. Claire had secretly forced the embryologist to implant both embryos into her womb—our biological daughter, and Arthur Sterling’s biological son.
“I didn't know if both would take!” Claire sobbed. “The chances of a dual implantation were less than five percent! But when the ultrasound showed two heartbeats at six weeks, I knew... I knew I was carrying one baby that was yours, and one baby that belonged to Arthur Sterling.”
“And my mother?” I asked, my voice dangerously low. “Did she know both embryos took?”
“She suspected it,” Claire whispered. “When the scans showed a boy and a girl, Arthur’s lab realized what I had done. Your mother was furious. She told me that the moment the babies were born, Arthur’s medical team would take the boy, perform a secret DNA test, and leave us with the girl. She said if I ever opened my mouth to you or the authorities, Arthur’s legal team would have me arrested for breach of contract, fraud, and illegal surrogacy!”
The door to the ICU room suddenly burst open.
Captain Robert Mercer of the State Police Major Crimes Unit stepped into the room, flanked by two armed state troopers. His face was grim, his eyes sharp and focused as he held a digital tablet in his gloved hand.
“Mr. Bennett?” Mercer asked, looking at me. “We just pulled the traffic camera logs from the hospital perimeter.”
I spun around to face him. “Did you find the car?”
“The dark sedan that picked up your mother, Evelyn Bennett, is registered to a corporate holding company owned by Sterling Global Enterprises,” Mercer stated, reading directly off his tablet. “The vehicle was tracked leaving the hospital grounds at 5:18 a.m., taking the interstate bypass toward the private airfield at Blackwood County Regional.”
“The airfield?” I took two steps toward the officer. “She’s taking him out of the state?”
“We’ve already issued an Amber Alert and grounded all private aircraft departures within a fifty-mile radius,” Mercer replied firmly. “However, three minutes ago, Arthur Sterling’s senior legal counsel filed an emergency injunction with the Circuit Court, claiming that the male infant is the legal property of a private surrogacy trust established under state law.”
Claire let out a blood-curdling shriek from the hospital bed, clutching her incision. “No! They’re going to fly him to his private estate in the Caribbean! He has an unextraditable compound in Saint Martin!”
I didn't waste another second arguing. The rage inside me had crystallized into an icy, unyielding directive. My mother and Arthur Sterling had stolen my son. They had bought, sold, and manipulated my family as if we were entries on a corporate balance sheet. They believed their billions, their legal injunctions, and their private jets made them untouchable.
They were about to find out how wrong they were.
I stepped over to the side of Claire’s bed, pulled her pale face toward mine, and kissed her forehead gently.
“Listen to me,” I whispered into her ear. “I am going to get Noah back. Stay here with Lily. Do not sign anything. Do not talk to any lawyer until I return.”
“Ethan, please!” she sobbed, holding my shirt cuff. “Arthur has private security! He has armed men!”
“I don't care what he has,” I said, pulling her hands gently from my shirt.
May you like
I turned to Captain Mercer. “Captain, you have an active Amber Alert for an abducted newborn. Are you coming with me to that airfield, or do I need to tear down Arthur Sterling’s private hangar myself?”
Mercer looked at me, his jaw tightening, his hand resting on his service weapon. “My troopers are already en route to Blackwood Airfield, Mr. Bennett. Get in my cruiser.”
