The silence in the nursery was so thick it felt like I was drowning in it. My vision blurred as I stared at the grainy image on my phone—the small, pale boy in the basement, a ghost made of flesh and bone, calling for a mother he had never been allowed to know.
“Valerie, put the phone down,” Spencer said, his voice dropping an octave into a register of pure, cold command. “You’re having an episode. You’ve been sleepwalking again. Eleanor, call the guards.”
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, my voice shaking so violently I could barely form the words. I looked at the man I had shared a bed with for seven years. I looked at the mother-in-law who had held my hand during my ‘miscarriage’ four years ago. “The basement, Spencer. Who is in the basement?”
Eleanor stepped forward, her silk robe billowing like a shroud. “There is no one in the basement, Valerie. You’ve been under a lot of stress. The hormones after Matthew’s birth… the post-partum psychosis we discussed…”
“I saw him!” I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat. “I saw his face! He has Spencer’s eyes! He has my father’s chin!”
The doctor in the white lab coat—Dr. Aristhone, a man I now recognized from the elite private surgical wing of Montgomery General—shuffled his feet. “Eleanor, we need to move. If she’s alerted the security feed, the digital footprint is already expanding.”
The Unveiling of the Nightmare
Rosa, still clutching Matthew to her chest with one hand and the kitchen knife with the other, moved toward me. She acted as a shield, placing her body between me and the husband I no longer recognized.
“They told you he died, Ms. Valerie,” Rosa hissed, her eyes darting between Spencer and the door. “Four years ago. They said the cord was wrapped. They said don’t look at the body, it will haunt you. But they took him. They took Leo.”
Leo. The name I had picked out in my dreams.
“Why?” I gasped, looking at Eleanor. “Why would you steal my first child and keep him in a cellar?”
Eleanor’s face didn’t soften. If anything, it turned to stone. “Because Leo was born with a failing heart, Valerie. A genetic defect from your side of the family. He was useless as an heir, a drain on the Montgomery legacy. But he was a perfect match for Spencer.”
I looked at Spencer. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. He was staring at the medical bag.
“Spencer has a degenerative condition,” the doctor added, his voice clinical, devoid of humanity. “He needs a series of highly specialized, compatible organ and tissue transfers to survive into his forties. We kept Leo alive, stabilized, as a… repository. A biological insurance policy.”
The room spun. My first son wasn’t a baby who had passed away; he was a ‘spare parts’ bin kept in the dark beneath our feet.
“And Matthew?” I choked out, gesturing to the infant in Rosa’s arms. “Why the ‘Donor’ tag on his bracelet?”
“Leo’s heart is failing faster than we anticipated,” Eleanor said, stepping closer, her voice dropping to a terrifyingly maternal soothe. “He won’t last another month. We need a younger, fresher source of stem cells and a partial liver transplant to bridge Spencer until we can finalize the next phase. Matthew is simply… helping his family.”
The Breakout
“You’re monsters,” I breathed.
“We are survivors,” Eleanor snapped. “And you, Valerie, are a liability.”
