Chapter 6 - THE FOURTH ARRANGEMENT
“THREE BABIES WEREN'T ENOUGH FOR YOU, HARRISON? YOU HAD TO TAKE THE ONLY EMBRYOS THAT WERE ACTUALLY MINE, TOO?”
I said those words into my phone that evening.
Harrison had called from an unfamiliar number.
I answered only because I thought it might be someone from the hospital.
The moment I recognized his voice, I put the call on speaker so June could hear.
“Chloe, sweetheart, I need you to stop listening to Naomi Reyes.”
His tone was maddeningly gentle.
“She's turning you against me.”
I stared at the wall.
“You did that yourself.”
“Everything I've done was for our future.”
“Our future?”
“You know how much money we've spent trying to have children.”
I closed my eyes.
Here it came.
The justification.
The explanation that was supposed to make betrayal seem reasonable.
“Harrison, tell me where my embryos are.”
Silence.
Then he sighed.
“You're getting yourself worked up over something you don't understand.”
“Were they transferred to another facility?”
“Medical decisions were made.”
“Without me?”
“Chloe—”
“Did someone else receive my embryos?”
His voice hardened.
“You need to remember that I know things about your medical history that could make this very unpleasant for you.”
June reached toward the phone.
I shook my head.
Instead, I asked one final question.
“Did you ever love me?”
For a moment, Harrison didn't answer.
Then he said:
“Of course I did.”
I swallowed.
“Then why wasn't I enough?”
His response came without hesitation.
“Because love doesn't pay the bills, Chloe.”
I ended the call.
June sat beside me in stunned silence.
Finally, she whispered:
“He really thinks he can explain this away.”
I nodded.
And for the first time, I felt something different from heartbreak.
I felt clarity.
I no longer needed Harrison to explain why he'd betrayed me.
I needed evidence of what he'd done.
The following morning, Naomi met with an attorney specializing in complex reproductive-law disputes.
Her name was Rebecca Shaw.
She had spent nearly twenty years handling assisted reproduction agreements, embryo disposition cases, and disputes involving parental rights.
Rebecca explained that the legal questions surrounding the three babies could not be answered by a single document.
Genetic relationships mattered.
Gestation mattered.
Informed consent mattered.
The exact circumstances of each arrangement mattered.
And the governing laws and court orders would matter enormously.
“Chloe,” Rebecca told me, “we're not going to build your case around a promise that the court will automatically give you everything you want.”
I nodded.
“I understand.”
“We're going to build it around the truth.”
I looked down at my stomach.
“Then please find out what happened to my embryos.”
Rebecca exchanged a glance with Naomi.
“We're working on that.”
A week later, the first significant break came from an unlikely source.
An accounting assistant who had worked for Bennett Family Solutions contacted Naomi's office.
Her name was Olivia Chen.
She was twenty-seven and had resigned from Harrison's company three months earlier.
She told Naomi that she had become uncomfortable with several financial transactions connected to the fertility clinic.
At first, Olivia had believed the business was legitimate.
The company processed fees.
Clients signed contracts.
Attorneys reviewed documents.
Everything appeared professional.
But certain payments bothered her.
Large sums were transferred to accounts identified only by client numbers.
The descriptions were vague.
And Harrison occasionally instructed her to remove references to specific patients.
“I asked him why the records didn't match,” Olivia explained during a meeting.
“He told me wealthy clients paid for privacy.”
“What changed your mind?” Naomi asked.
Olivia hesitated.
“One afternoon, I saw an internal spreadsheet with a woman's name beside three different recipient accounts.”
My heart accelerated.
“What name?”
She looked directly into the camera.
“Chloe Bennett.”
I stopped breathing.
Olivia continued.
“The spreadsheet described a triplet pregnancy and listed separate expected payments for three deliveries.”
My hands tightened around the blanket.
“Did you know what it meant?”
“No. Not then.”
She swallowed.
“But after I heard about the incident at the hotel, I understood.”
Naomi leaned forward.
“Do you still have access to those records?”
“I preserved some work-related messages and reports before resigning. I haven't altered them.”
Rebecca asked her to provide the materials through counsel so their origins and authenticity could be evaluated.
Then Olivia said something none of us expected.
“There was a fourth entry.”
I stared at her.
“A fourth baby?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“A separate storage transaction. I remember it because it was unusually expensive.”
“Connected to me?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
Olivia glanced at her notes.
“Two embryos. One transferred to an outside storage facility. One listed as disposed of.”
I felt the air leave my lungs.
“Do you know where they went?”
“Not directly.”
She hesitated.
“But the recipient account belonged to a cryogenic storage company in Connecticut.”
For the first time, we had a location.
Not proof of what had happened.
But somewhere to begin.
That night, I dreamed about a nursery filled with four bassinets.
Three stood beside the window.
A fourth sat alone in the darkness.
I kept trying to reach it, but the room grew longer every time I moved.
When I woke, I was crying.
June heard me and came to my bedside.
“Bad dream?”
I nodded.
She brought me water.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then I asked something that had been haunting me.
“June, what if one of my embryos really was transferred to another woman?”
My sister hesitated.
“We don't know that happened.”
“But what if it did?”
She sat beside me.
I looked at my stomach.
“I know what it feels like to have someone make decisions about your body without permission.”
My voice broke.
“If there's another woman involved, I don't want her to experience what I'm going through.”
June studied me.
Even after everything, I was thinking about someone who might be carrying an embryo created from my own eggs.
But I didn't know who she was.
Or whether she even existed.
There was only one thing I knew for certain.
I would not become another Harrison.
I would not treat another woman's body as something I owned.
Two days later, Harper's attorney sent Naomi a settlement proposal.
The document offered a substantial financial payment if I agreed not to contest Harper's claimed parentage of Baby A.
It also required strict confidentiality.
Rebecca read the terms.
Then she looked at me.
“You have no obligation to accept this.”
I stared at the proposed payment.
A million dollars.
Enough to pay every medical bill.
Enough to buy a home.
Enough to make my immediate financial fears disappear.
Harrison had frozen our joint accounts after I left him.
June had been paying for nearly everything.
I felt ashamed that, for one terrible moment, the money tempted me.
Then Baby A shifted beneath my ribs.
I placed a hand against my belly.
“Tell Harper I won't discuss surrendering a child in exchange for money.”
Rebecca nodded.
“That's your decision.”
“And tell her something else.”
“What?”
“If she truly believes she's been wronged, she should help us find out who committed the fraud instead of trying to buy my silence.”
That evening, Naomi received a message from the Connecticut storage facility's legal department.
The company confirmed that records associated with Sterling Reproductive Center were being preserved pending review.
It would not release patient information without proper authorization or a court order.
But it acknowledged receiving materials under an account connected to Bennett Family Solutions.
For the first time, the trail was real.
I sat beside the window, holding one of the ultrasound photographs.
“Hang on,” I whispered to the babies.
“I'm trying.”
Then Rebecca called.
Her voice sounded unusually tense.
“Chloe, there's another person we need to speak with urgently.”
“Who?”
“A woman named Eleanor Finch.”
I recognized the surname immediately.
Audrey Finch.
The deceased woman whose embryo Harrison had arranged to transfer into me.
“What does she want?”
Rebecca paused.
“She's Audrey's mother.”
My stomach tightened.
“Is she demanding the third baby?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“She's saying her daughter left explicit instructions that her embryos were never to be used after her death without her husband's written authorization.”
I stared at the phone.
Rebecca continued.
“Chloe, if that's accurate, Harrison may have violated another woman's wishes as well.”
May you like
Then she said something even more disturbing.
“And Eleanor believes someone in her own family helped him do it.”
