CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2 — THE BLUE ENVELOPE
David saw the movement.
“Give me the envelope.”
Marcus froze.
Sophia turned toward the lawyer.
“Marcus, don’t.”
David’s eyes moved between them.
“Why does my wife know what’s in your pocket?”
“It is confidential,” Marcus said.
“I’m your client.”
“Not in this matter.”
The answer landed like a second accusation.
David held out his hand.
“Give it to me.”
Marcus looked at Sophia, silently asking permission.
She shook her head.
That was the moment David lost patience.
He stepped forward and pulled the envelope from Marcus’s jacket.
Sophia tried to stop him.
“David, please.”
He tore it open.
Inside was a medical document bearing the name of a private fertility clinic in New York.
David read the first page.
Then the second.
His expression hardened.
The document listed Sophia as the patient.
It listed a donor identification number.
And beneath the section marked Intended Parent, David Walker’s signature appeared in dark blue ink.
David stared at it.
“That isn’t my signature.”
Marcus answered carefully.
“It was witnessed by two people.”
“I never signed this.”
Sophia’s voice trembled.
“You did.”
David looked at her as though she had become a stranger.
“No.”
“It was four years ago.”
“We weren’t even trying for a child four years ago.”
Sophia began to cry.
“Yes, we were.”
Eleanor interrupted.
“My son would remember something like this.”
Marcus removed another paper from the envelope.
“It happened before the accident.”
The room went still.
Three years earlier, David had suffered a severe head injury when his car went off a bridge during a storm. He recovered physically, but several months of memory before the crash never returned.
Doctors had warned that the missing memories might remain gone forever.
David looked again at the document.
“So you’re saying I agreed to donor conception.”
“Yes,” Sophia said.
“And then everyone decided not to tell me?”
“You told us not to.”
Charlie suddenly spoke in David’s voice.
“If I forget, don’t tell me until the baby is safe.”
David turned toward the bird.
The sentence was too specific to dismiss.
Sophia wiped her face.
“You recorded messages for yourself before the accident. Charlie heard some of them.”
“Where are the recordings?”
Sophia looked at Marcus.
The lawyer answered.
“Gone.”
David’s jaw tightened.
“How convenient.”
“They were stored on a private drive,” Marcus said. “The drive disappeared the night of your accident.”
David looked at Eleanor.
His mother’s face had changed.
Not surprise.
Fear.
“You knew,” he said.
Eleanor remained silent.
“You knew about the clinic.”
“I knew you and Sophia were having difficulties.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Before Eleanor could answer, the baby began crying harder.
Sophia reached for Noah again.
This time Eleanor allowed her to take him.
David watched his wife soothe the child.
The scene should have softened him.
Instead, he felt something colder.
The clinic document proved he had agreed to a donor.
But it did not prove Noah had been conceived through that clinic.
“Where is the DNA test?” he asked.
Sophia looked up.
“What test?”
“The one that proves the donor was used.”
“There wasn’t one.”
David gave a bitter smile.
“So the bird says the baby isn’t mine. You produce a four-year-old contract I don’t remember signing, and I’m supposed to stop asking questions?”
Sophia’s expression changed from fear to anger.
“You think I slept with someone else?”
“I think you’re hiding something.”
Charlie shifted on his perch.
Then he repeated a new sentence.
A man’s voice.
Not David’s.
Not Marcus’s.
“Once the baby is born, the Walker fortune belongs to us.”
Eleanor’s hand moved to the edge of the table.
David saw her knees weaken.
Sophia stared at the parrot.
Marcus whispered, “That voice…”
David turned to him.
“You recognize it?”
Marcus nodded slowly.
“It belongs to Thomas Reed.”
David knew the name.
Thomas had been his father’s business partner.
He had also died two years earlier.
Then the ballroom doors opened.
A security guard entered, holding a small black box.
“Mr. Walker,” he said, “we found this hidden beneath the parrot’s stand.”
Inside the box was a recording device.
And it was still transmitting.
👇 Chapter 3
