Chapter 6 Fractured Bonds

**Chapter 6 — Fractured Bonds**

The university coffee shop hadn't changed in six years. Same mismatched furniture, same chalkboard menu, same scent of espresso and cinnamon rolls. I arrived early, choosing a table near the window where Rachel and Derek could see me from their position across the street in a bookstore café.

My hands wouldn't stop trembling, so I wrapped them around a mug of tea I couldn't bring myself to drink. The ultrasound image burned in my mind—a ghost from the past I thought I'd laid to rest years ago.

Nathaniel arrived precisely on time. He scanned the room before approaching, his face drawn with tension. He wore jeans and a simple gray sweater—so different from the polished business attire he'd adopted since returning to Seattle. For a moment, he looked like the boy I'd fallen in love with in college.

"Thank you for coming," he said quietly, sitting across from me.

"The ultrasound," I said, skipping any preamble. "How did you get it?"

He placed a worn leather portfolio on the table between us. "In here is everything I've managed to piece together over the past year. About us, about what really happened."

"Answer my question, Nathaniel."

His eyes met mine, pained but direct. "I found it in my father's private safe. Along with this." He slid a document across the table.

It was a medical report from the Portland clinic where I'd gone for the abortion. Except according to this report, no procedure had been performed.

"I don't understand," I whispered, scanning the document. "This says I was examined and released. That's not what happened."

"Isn't it?" Nathaniel leaned forward. "What do you actually remember from that day, Olivia? Not what you've told yourself happened, but your actual memories."

I started to protest, but his question gave me pause. The day at the clinic had always been a blur in my mind—grief and medication clouding the details. I remembered the waiting room, the counseling session, signing forms. But the procedure itself...

"I was sedated," I said slowly. "When I woke up, it was over. They told me everything went as expected."

"Who told you? Do you remember the doctor's name? The nurse?"

I frowned, trying to recall faces, names, any concrete details. "It was six years ago, Nathaniel."

"And one of the most traumatic days of your life, yet you don't remember the specifics." He opened the portfolio, revealing more documents. "Because what you think happened and what actually happened are two different things."

My heart began to race. "What are you saying?"

"The clinic exists, but it's owned by a subsidiary of Wilson Enterprises. The doctor who supposedly performed your procedure was on my father's payroll." Nathaniel's voice was gentle but firm. "You went in for an abortion, but according to these records, you were given a sedative and prenatal vitamins. Then you were told it was done."

The room seemed to tilt around me. "That's not possible. I wasn't pregnant afterward. I would have known."

"Wouldn't you?" His eyes held mine. "You were devastated, alone, convinced I'd abandoned you. You bled a little from the examination—common in early pregnancy—and took it as confirmation. You never followed up, never had another test."

"Because I wasn't pregnant anymore!" My voice rose, drawing glances from nearby tables. I lowered it again. "This is insane, Nathaniel. Are you suggesting I imagined losing our baby?"

"I'm suggesting we were both manipulated in the cruelest way possible." He pulled out another document—a transfer of a significant sum to a private adoption agency, dated one month after my clinic visit. "My father arranged everything. The fake abortion. Your belief that it was over. And then..."

"No." I shook my head, unable to process what he was implying. "No, that's not—we would have known. Someone would have told us."

"Who? Rachel was the only one who knew you were pregnant, and she believed you'd gone through with the procedure. I was in London, being fed lies about you moving on, while being subjected to treatments that left me confused and broken. And my father had all the power and money needed to make a baby disappear into the adoption system."

Tears blurred my vision as I stared at the documents before me. Could it be true? Could our child—our baby—have been born without our knowledge? The thought was too overwhelming, too painful to comprehend.

"Why?" I finally managed to ask. "Why would he go to such lengths?"

"Control." Nathaniel's voice hardened. "He couldn't risk his heir being tied to someone he considered beneath us. But he also couldn't risk the scandal of forcing his son's girlfriend to terminate a pregnancy. This way, he eliminated the problem while keeping his hands clean."

I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to make sense of it all. "These documents could be fake. This could be another manipulation."

"They could be." Nathaniel nodded. "Which is why I hired a private investigator to track the adoption. He found this." He pulled out a final document—a birth certificate for a baby girl, born nine months after my visit to the clinic. The mother's name was listed as "Jane Doe," but the birth date and location aligned perfectly.

My daughter. Our daughter. Somewhere in the world, a five-year-old girl with Nathaniel's eyes and my smile was living with another family, completely unaware of the twisted circumstances of her birth.

"Her name is Emma," Nathaniel said softly. "She was adopted by a couple in Connecticut. Doctor and professor. By all accounts, she's healthy and happy."

A sob escaped me, drawing more attention from nearby patrons. Nathaniel reached across the table, his hand covering mine.

"I know this is overwhelming," he said. "I've had months to process it, and I still can't fully comprehend what my father did to us."

I pulled my hand away, suddenly remembering why we were here, in this café where we'd once planned our future. "And your revenge? Was that real, or another lie?"

Pain flashed across his face. "When I first found these documents, yes—I wanted to hurt him by taking you away. I was angry, confused, still dealing with the aftereffects of the treatments. But seeing you again..." He exhaled slowly. "I remembered why I loved you. Not the distorted version my father and Dr. Mercer planted in my mind, but the real you. The woman who would stay up all night helping me study, who could argue passionately about art for hours, who saw beyond the Wilson name to the person I was trying to become."

Despite everything, my heart responded to his words, to the raw honesty in his eyes. But doubt still lingered.

"Why didn't you tell me this immediately? Why the games, the secret meetings, the...tension between us?"

"Because I needed to be sure of what I was feeling. Sure it wasn't just another manipulation." He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture so familiar it ached. "And I needed to be certain of your feelings for my father. If you truly loved him, I would have stayed silent, let you have the happiness you deserved."

"And now?" I asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"Now I know the truth. You married him for the same reason many people do—security, stability, a chance at a new life. But you don't love him. You can't love someone built on lies."

My phone buzzed with a text from Rachel: "Henry just entered the bookstore across the street. Get out now."

I showed Nathaniel the message, watching his expression harden.

"We need to leave," he said, gathering the documents. "Separately. He can't see us together."

"Where do I go?" Panic rose in my throat. "I can't go back to the house."

"My apartment downtown. He doesn't know about it." Nathaniel scribbled an address on a napkin. "Go there and wait for me. I'll create a diversion."

As I stood to leave, he caught my wrist. "Olivia." His eyes searched mine, intense and desperate. "I know you have no reason to trust me. But please believe this—everything I've done since finding these documents has been to protect you, and to find our daughter."

Our daughter. The words sent a fresh wave of pain and longing through me.

"I'll meet you there," I promised. "But Nathaniel—if this is another game, another manipulation..."

"It's not." He squeezed my hand. "This time, we fight back together."

I slipped out the back entrance, texting Rachel to meet me a block away. As I hurried down the alley, I heard raised voices from inside the café—Nathaniel creating his diversion, confronting his father in public where Henry would be forced to maintain his composure.

Rachel was waiting in her car, engine running. "Get in," she urged. "Derek is following Henry."

As we pulled away, I gave her Nathaniel's address. She looked at me skeptically.

"You're trusting him now?"

"I don't know who to trust anymore." I stared out the window, watching the familiar campus disappear behind us. "But I need to hear him out. He says... he says our baby wasn't aborted. That Henry arranged a fake procedure and had her adopted without our knowledge."

Rachel nearly swerved off the road. "What? Liv, that's—"

"Insane? Monstrous? Yes." I turned to face her. "But is it any more insane than everything else we've discovered? The surveillance, the manipulation, the memory treatments?"

She gripped the steering wheel tighter. "Do you believe him?"

"I don't know." Tears threatened again. "But if there's even a chance our daughter is out there..."

Rachel's expression softened. "I understand. But please, be careful. Men like Nathaniel—men who've been hurt and manipulated—can be unpredictable."

"I know." I clutched the portfolio of documents Nathaniel had entrusted to me. "But I need answers, and he's the only one offering them."

At Nathaniel's apartment—a minimalist loft in a converted warehouse—I paced nervously, studying the documents again while waiting for him to arrive. Rachel had reluctantly left after I insisted I needed time alone, but promised to remain nearby.

An hour passed. Then two. Worry gnawed at me as calls to Nathaniel's cell went straight to voicemail. Had Henry intercepted him? Or was this another elaborate setup?

Just as I was about to leave, the door opened. Nathaniel entered, his face bruised, a cut above his eye slowly seeping blood.

"What happened?" I rushed to him, instinctively reaching for his injured face.

"Dear old Dad wasn't happy about our meeting." He winced as my fingers gently probed the bruise. "Don't worry, he looks worse."

"You fought in public?" I led him to the kitchen, searching for first aid supplies.

"Not exactly. We took it outside like gentlemen." His attempt at humor fell flat as he grimaced in pain. "He knows we've figured it out, Olivia. About Emma."

The name sent a fresh jolt through me. "What do we do now?"

Nathaniel took my hands, his expression grave. "We have two options. We can take these documents to the authorities, expose what he did. There would be an investigation, possible criminal charges."

"But?"

"But it would become public. Emma's adoptive parents would learn the truth in the worst possible way. Her life would be upended, and there's no guarantee we would gain any rights to her."

I sank onto a stool, the weight of it all crushing down on me. "And the second option?"

"We approach them privately. Through proper channels, with legal representation. We explain the situation, request contact, perhaps visitation. It would be on their terms, but it would protect Emma from public scrutiny."

"And Henry?"

Nathaniel's expression darkened. "We still expose him, but more selectively. To the board of directors, to key business associates. We dismantle his empire piece by piece, from the inside."

I considered both options, my mind racing with implications, with hopes I'd never dared entertain. A daughter. Our daughter. Alive and growing somewhere, with a piece of my heart I thought I'd lost forever.

A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. Nathaniel tensed, moving protectively in front of me.

"Are you expecting someone?" I whispered.

He shook his head, moving silently to check the peephole. His body relaxed slightly. "It's Rachel."

When he opened the door, Rachel burst in, her face pale with urgency. "You both need to see this." She thrust her phone toward us, showing an email that had just arrived.

The message was brief, from an anonymous sender, with a single attachment—a photograph of a little girl with dark curly hair and familiar eyes, playing in what looked like a backyard garden. The text read simply: "Her name is Emma Wilson. Henry has had her all along."

My knees buckled. Nathaniel caught me before I hit the floor, his own face a mask of shock and disbelief.

"That's not possible," he whispered. "The adoption records..."

"Were another manipulation," Rachel finished. "Look at the email address it came from."

The sender was Martha—Henry's faithful housekeeper for twenty years.

"There's more," Rachel said, scrolling to show another message that had arrived seconds later. "Martha says she's been caring for Emma since she was born, at Henry's estate in Vermont. She thought you knew, Nathaniel—that you'd agreed to the arrangement when you were 'unwell.' She only learned the truth when she overheard Henry on the phone after you two fought today."

Nathaniel's face transformed with a fury I'd never seen before. "He's had our daughter all this time? Raising her in secret while keeping us apart?"

A cold certainty settled over me. "He never intended for us to find out. The only reason Martha knows is because she's been the child's caregiver."

"But why?" Rachel asked. "Why keep her at all? Why not just arrange a real adoption?"

"Because she's a Wilson," Nathaniel said, his voice hollow with realization. "His flesh and blood. He couldn't let go of that control, that ownership—even while denying her to us."

As the implications sank in, my shock gave way to a determination I'd never felt before. Henry hadn't just manipulated our past; he'd stolen our future, our child, our chance at being a family.

"We're going to get her back," I said, my voice steady despite the storm raging inside me. "Whatever it takes."

Nathaniel's eyes met mine, the connection between us stronger than ever in our shared resolve. "Together," he agreed. "We end this now."

Rachel looked between us, her expression grim. "Henry won't give her up without a fight. And he still holds all the power."

"Not all of it," I countered, reaching for the folder of evidence. "Not anymore."

As we began formulating our plan, a text arrived on Nathaniel's phone—from Henry.

"I believe it's time we discussed your daughter's future. All three of us. Come home, son. Bring your... mother."

The mockery in that last word couldn't disguise the underlying threat. Henry knew we'd discovered the truth, and he was making his move.

"It's a trap," Rachel warned.

"Of course it is," Nathaniel agreed. "But it's also our only chance to see Emma."

I looked at the photo again—at the little girl who had my smile and Nathaniel's eyes, who had been living just a few hours away all this time, never knowing her real parents.

"We go," I decided. "But not alone, and not unprepared."

As we gathered our evidence and allies, preparing for the confrontation that would determine all our futures, one thought sustained me: somewhere in that mansion of shadows and lies, our daughter was waiting. And this time, nothing would keep us apart.