Chapter 9 - THE BOY BEHIND THE SECOND HEART.
The second child was nine-year-old Noah Gray, living safely with a foster family in Maryland. His birth record named Anna as his mother but listed no father.
Ethan stared at Anna.
“Is he mine?”
Anna shook her head.
“No. He belongs to a worker whose identity Eleanor erased.”
Noah’s father, Marcus Reed, had been a Black maintenance engineer who discovered the copied heart signatures. After threatening to expose William Mercer, Marcus was accused of theft, fired and later declared dead.
Anna had hidden Noah with Lily because both children inherited worker-trust claims.
Eleanor called Marcus disloyal.
Ruth answered, “You used his engineering, erased his name and called resistance betrayal.”
Federal investigators reopened Marcus’s disappearance and froze the foundation.
Then Noah’s foster advocate sent a photograph taken one week earlier.
Marcus was alive, standing outside the Mercer mansion.
Beside him was Ethan.
Ethan looked at the image in disbelief.
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“I have never met that man.”
But he was wearing the same black suit as in the photograph.
