PAGE 12 — CHAPTER 12: HARRISON’S SECRET
The hallway outside the courtroom emptied.
Khloe remained on the bench, holding Hope.
“Harrison.”
He stood several feet away.
“How long did you know?”
Harrison’s silence answered before his words did.
“Three years.”
Khloe went pale.
“You knew?”
“I suspected. A client acquired records connected to Richard’s Swiss clinic.”
“And you said nothing?”
“The records were illegally obtained. I couldn’t verify them.”
“You could have warned me.”
“You were recovering from your second miscarriage. You told me Richard was the only person keeping you together.”
“He was lying to me.”
“I didn’t know how much.”
Khloe’s eyes filled with tears.
“You decided I was too fragile for the truth.”
“I decided not to destroy your marriage with information I couldn’t prove.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make.”
Harrison looked as if she had struck him.
She handed Hope to the nurse and stood.
“All this time, you’ve been acting like my protector.”
“I am your protector.”
“No. Sometimes you’re another man who believes he knows what I can handle.”
Khloe walked away.
For the first time since the courthouse fall, Harrison did not follow.
That evening, he returned to his office and opened the file he had hidden for three years. It contained Richard’s cancer treatment, infertility diagnosis, and private correspondence with the clinic.
One email carried a detail Harrison had overlooked.
Donor 3187 was not anonymous.
The donor had requested that his identity remain sealed from the recipient but available to the child after age eighteen.
A separate numerical code linked the donation to a medical residency program in Manhattan.
Harrison subpoenaed the archived records.
The next morning, he received a name.
Dr. Samuel Reed.
A pediatric heart surgeon.
Harrison arranged a private meeting without telling Khloe.
Samuel arrived expecting a legal consultation.
When Harrison explained that he might be the biological father of an infant conceived without the mother’s informed consent, the doctor became visibly shaken.
“I donated once when I was a resident,” Samuel said. “I was told it would be used only with the recipient’s written permission.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Does the mother know?”
“Not yet.”
Samuel stood.
“She deserves the truth.”
Harrison nodded.
“I know.”
But before he could call Khloe, his assistant rushed into the room.
Charles Harrington’s plane had been found abandoned in Nova Scotia.
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Inside the cabin, investigators discovered blood.
And Judge Pierce was missing.
