Page 105 of Anchor
THIRTY-FOUR
CHASE EXECUTIVE TOWER – PRIVATE OFFICE – 0752 HOURS
The room was too quiet when the door opened. Claire stood with her arms folded, facing Heather Bowman across the wide steel desk. Zach Wentworth hadn’t moved from the wall, his presence a watchtower, his gaze anchored on Heather like he expected her to try something, even now. Kieran sat near the terminal, one hand idle against the edge of the screen, eyes low but listening to everything.
Then the door slid open, and Ian Chase stepped through, Martin Bailey at his side. Martin’s face said everything.
“They got it in time?” Claire’s voice was barely steady.
Martin gave a single nod. “The antidote’s been administered.”
Ian stepped forward. “He’s responding, Claire. They’ve got a heart rhythm. Reid’s in the fight again.”
She closed her eyes for the briefest second. It was not peace, but it was breath.
Behind her, Heather said coolly, “How fitting. The entire upper echelon of Chase, all gathered in one room for my judgment day.”
Ian didn’t even glance at her. “No,” he said. “This isn’t judgment. That part comes later.” He took another step, and the space between them turned sharp with tension. His voice dropped to a lethal chill. “Before I send you out to the wolves, I want answers to one more thing.”
Claire turned to look at him.
His eyes met hers. “For Claire,” he said. “I want to know about Geneva. I want to know about her beginnings.”
A silence fell so hard, the room seemed to shift around it.
Heather blinked once, then straightened. “That’s irrelevant.”
“No,” Ian said. “It’s everything.”
She hesitated. For the first time, Claire saw hesitation. It wasn’t fear, but something close.
“What’s my incentive?” Heather asked.
Martin folded his arms. Kieran didn’t even lift his eyes.
Ian leaned forward, every syllable like nails on a chalkboard. “You get to resign from everything. Every board. Every advisory. Every network. You vanish, Heather. You take nothing. You contact no one. You get thirty-six hours to put your things in order. After that, if I hear your name again, I will end your legacy, publicly, piece by piece.”
Heather exhaled. A small breath, nothing more. But Claire saw the shift. The collapse. She nodded once. “I was pregnant,” she said. “Joseph believed the child was his.”
Claire’s breath caught.
“But it wasn’t,” Heather added. “It was Lucien’s.”
The words hit like a blow. Claire’s fingers clenched where they crossed over her ribs. Zach straightened from the wall.
“I lost the baby,” Heather said. “Early second trimester. Joseph never knew. I told him the bleeding was a mild complication, but I was fine.”
Ian didn’t speak. Kieran finally looked up.
Claire stepped forward. “Why Geneva?” she asked. “Why lie about being pregnant?”
Heather’s eyes fixed on her daughter like she was inspecting a finished design, not a person. Her voice was clean, efficient. No softness. “Lucien is B positive. I am O positive. Joseph was O positive. The miscarried child was B positive. If Joseph saw the report, he’d know the child wasn’t his. So I faked the pregnancy.
“Joseph was in Geneva, of course. Always eager to be useful. He thought the world needed his diplomacy. I was already being scolded for flying pregnant. He never questioned me. That was his strength and his weakness. While he was busy shaking hands, I was meeting with Lucien.
“Lucien had the instincts Joseph lacked. He didn’t waste time on sentiment. He saw the value in structure, in timing, in control. We got lucky. I needed a child, not a relationship, not a dream, just the image. The message. Geneva and Lucien offered all of it in one transaction.
“If I gave birth publicly, we could bend the meaning. A new life, born in an emergency, creating something people could project their hope onto. And, frankly, I didn’t have the desire to wait for another pregnancy. I wasn’t going to rot in some domestic delusion, praying for nature to do its job. I’m not an elephant—I wasn’t built for a long, potentially useless gestation. I needed results. So, we made them. We planned everything—how it would look, how it would sound, how it would land in America. We even found the doctor who would help us. But, despite TV movies, it really is hard to secretly buy an American baby.”
