The sterile, dawn-lit lounge of Aeterna Tower was not made for the kind
of truth Julian carried. He stood before Elara and Silas, the documents from
Vivian's safe spread across a low glass table like evidence in an autopsy. The
photograph of Elora. The cold clinical notes. The damning IVF report.
He had explained it in a flat, detached voice, the horror so profound it
had scoured him clean of emotion. "I am a placeholder. They were building a
replacement. A pure heir, with no trace of Steven or… her."
Elara's hand had gone to her own abdomen, a protective instinct she
couldn't suppress. Silas's gaze was like flint, analysing the tactical
implications—a new heir meant a shift in power, a potential splintering of the
Cohen fortune.
"It's monstrous, but it's logical from their warped perspective," Silas
said. "They secure the dynasty with a child that is biologically Vivian's and,
they believe, fully theirs."
"Believe?" Julian caught the word, a flicker in his deadened eyes.
Silas nodded to the report. "It lists anonymous donor sperm. They would
have used an unrelated donor. It's the only way to ensure no… legacy
complications."
A bitter, broken sound that was almost a laugh escaped Julian.
"Anonymous. Of course." He ran a hand over his face. "There's more. The
journal. She wrote about the procedure. About a 'clean start.' But she also
mentioned the 'family health bank.' A repository Arthur insisted we all
contribute to years ago. In case of future medical needs. I thought it was
eccentric. I donated…" His voice trailed off, his eyes, wide with dawning,
sickening comprehension, locking onto the date of the IVF procedure. Then he looked
back at a footnote on the clinic form he'd overlooked: Source Material:
Designated Family Repository - Cohort J.C.
The air left the room.
"No," Elara whispered, the word a prayer of denial.
Julian's knees buckled. He caught himself on the edge of the table, his
knuckles white. "The 'anonymous donor'… was me." He looked up, his face ashen.
"She used my sperm. To conceive a child. With herself."
The twist was not just sickening; it was an abomination that re-wired
reality. The child Vivian was carrying—the heir meant to replace him—was not
his sibling.
It was his daughter.
The carefully constructed world of the Cohens, already revealed as a
hall of mirrors, now revealed itself as a gothic nightmare. Vivian's jealousy
of the first Elora, her obsession with a "pure" Cohen line, her cold assessment
of Julian as a flawed vessel… it had all culminated in this grotesque,
calculated act. She hadn't just wanted a child without Steven's taint. She had
wanted Julian's child, but filtered through herself, purged of his rebellious
spirit, raised from inception to be the perfect heir. She had made herself the
mother of her husband's grandson, and in her mind, had finally erased the first
Elora completely.
"The child she believes is her fresh start…" Julian choked out, staring
at nothing, "is my child. Conceived without my knowledge. My… daughter." He
looked at Elara, his gaze begging for an anchor. "The 'younger sibling' I was
supposed to mentor and then quietly defer to… is my own blood. Raised by my… by
Vivian and Arthur as their child."
The psychological violence of it was staggering. It was the ultimate act
of ownership, of erasure. They would take his own biological material and use
it to create his successor, raising that child to see him not as a father, but
as a flawed older brother to be pitied and eventually surpassed.
Silas was the first to speak into the reverberating silence, his voice
low and dangerous. "This is more than a secret. This is a weapon of mass
destruction. If Steven knew this…"
"He'd burn the world to the ground," Julian finished, a spark of
something—his father's fire—igniting in the ashes of his shock. "His hatred for
Arthur is bottomless. But this… this perversion of his son, this violation…
it's beyond vengeance. It's a desecration."
Elara felt a surge of nausea that had nothing to do with her pregnancy.
The cruelty was so precise, so intimate. "She's due soon," she said, her mind
racing ahead to the horrible practicalities. "When that child is born, the lie
becomes a person. A person who will grow up in that house, calling you
'brother,' never knowing…"
"We have to stop it," Julian said, the words hollow. But how? Expose a
pregnant woman? Reveal a truth so horrific it would shatter every life it
touched, including an innocent child's?
"Steven is the immediate threat," Silas said, focusing the field. "He's
moving against Elara. But this… this is his ultimate trigger. If we need
leverage, if we need to force him into the open or make him break cover, this
information is tactical plutonium. He would do anything to protect the truth of
his grandchild, or to avenge this… sacrilege."
The moral landscape had become a minefield. They held a secret that
could devastate Julian, destroy Vivian and Arthur, and unleash Steven's
unrestrained fury. Using it felt vile. Not using it felt like surrender.
Julian sank into a chair, looking at the photograph of his real mother,
Elora. Her gentle, tragic face. Then he imagined Vivian's cold, triumphant
smile as she held a newborn, a baby that was both her son and her grandson, the
ultimate symbol of her victory over the past.
"All my life," he said, his voice barely audible, "I felt like a guest
in my own home. Now I know I was just… raw material. And they were already
recycling me." He looked up at Elara, a terrible clarity in his eyes. "I don't
care about the empire. I don't care about the fortune. But that child… my
daughter… she cannot be raised in that house. She cannot live that lie."
A new, desperate objective was born, not from a desire for vengeance,
but from a shattered instinct to protect. The alliance had just been burdened
with an impossible mission: to defeat a ghost, outmanoeuvre a monstrous couple,
and somehow rescue an unborn child from a gilded cage of unimaginable deceit.
The fight was no longer just for the past. It was for a future that
hadn't even been born yet, already condemned to a legacy of poison. And Julian,
the prodigal son, the failed prototype, was now, horrifically, a father.