Chapter 4 - Natalie Reed Was Never Lucas’s Mother
Natalie Reed had not died after childbirth.
She had died six months later in a car accident.
Public records confirmed it.
The documents Adrian received had rearranged real facts into a false story.
Natalie existed.
She died.
But she had not given birth to Lucas.
Someone used her identity in Hannah’s protected hospital file.
Adrian asked why.
The hospital opened an internal investigation.
Archived access logs showed Natalie had edited Hannah’s record repeatedly.
But she was not the only person.
A physician named Dr. Thomas Hale accessed the file more than forty times.
Emily knew him.
He had been Hannah’s obstetrician before Hannah disappeared.
Emily remembered confronting him.
He told her Hannah transferred care.
That had been a lie.
Dr. Hale had retired to Florida.
Investigators contacted him.
He initially refused to speak.
Then Adrian’s attorney obtained the relevant records through legal channels.
Hannah gave birth at St. Matthew fourteen months earlier.
The child was male.
The father listed in the sealed prenatal record:
Adrian Vale.
Adrian stared at the screen.
He had never met Hannah.
At least, he believed he had not.
Emily asked where he had been approximately nine months before Lucas’s birth.
Adrian thought.
Then remembered a medical conference in Chicago.
He had attended a private donor reception.
Emily opened an old photograph Hannah had sent her from that same weekend.
Hannah was in Chicago.
She had been working temporary event staff.
Adrian looked at the image.
“I remember her.”
Not as a girlfriend.
As the woman who helped him after he became ill during the reception.
Adrian had suffered a severe reaction to medication mixed with alcohol.
Hannah stayed with him until his security team arrived.
He remembered almost nothing after midnight.
His expression changed.
“I never slept with her.”
Emily looked at him.
“Then how can Lucas be your biological son?”
Nobody answered.
The paternity test was repeated independently.
The result was the same.
Adrian was Lucas’s father.
May you like
Now the mystery was no longer only who Lucas’s mother was.
It was how a child had been conceived without either alleged parent ever having a relationship.
