The next morning, Carissa sat in a glass-walled conference room on the top floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. The city sprawled below her, gray and indifferent. Guilford's private attorney sat across the table, a thin man in his sixties with a pinched mouth and eyes like cold pebbles.
He slid a thick document across the polished table. "Reproductive Cooperation Agreement." He placed an expensive Montblanc pen next to it.
Carissa opened the folder. She bypassed the medical clauses and flipped straight to the appendix labeled "Historical Debt Settlement."
There it was. A bank transfer record from three years ago. Five million dollars. The receiving account belonged to Isiah Molina. Her father.
Carissa's stomach cramped violently. Acid rose in her throat. Essie hadn't been lying.
"If you sign this new contract," the lawyer said, his voice flat, "the previous five million is forgiven, and you will receive substantial new compensation."
Carissa slammed the folder shut. She didn't touch the pen. "I have personal business to handle first." She stood up and walked out.
She rode the elevator down, her hands shaking so badly she could barely press the lobby button.
An hour later, Carissa walked down a trash-littered street in Queens. She stopped in front of a peeling, rundown townhouse with a sagging porch and dead plants in cracked pots.
She didn't knock. She pulled a spare key from her bag and shoved it into the rusted lock. The door shrieked open.
Inside the cramped, messy living room, Isiah Molina was slouched on a stained sofa, watching a baseball game on an old TV. He was a heavyset man in his late fifties, with a ruddy face, thinning gray hair, and small, mean eyes. Her stepmother Janey sat beside him, a plump woman with bleached blonde hair and dark roots showing, filing her nails with a face mask on.
Isiah jumped at the sound of the door. "What the hell are you doing here? Come to beg for rent money again?"
Carissa didn't speak. She marched forward and threw the crumpled photocopy of the bank transfer directly at his face.
The sharp edge of the paper sliced a tiny cut across Isiah's cheek. He roared, jumping up with his fists clenched. Then his eyes fell on the numbers printed on the paper. He froze.
Janey ripped her face mask off, her eyes wide with panic. She scrambled to grab the paper. "That... that was for an investment!" she stuttered.
Carissa stepped into Isiah's space, her eyes bloodshot. "Did you sell my sick baby to the Gates family for five million dollars?" Her voice came out raw, scraped clean.
Isiah's shock morphed into defensive rage. His face went red. "He was a burden! Selling him to rich people was the best thing for him!"
The sheer audacity turned Carissa's vision red. She swung her arm and slapped Isiah across the face with every ounce of strength she had.
The crack echoed in the small room. Janey shrieked and lunged at Carissa, grabbing a fistful of her dark hair.
Carissa, hardened by years of working double shifts, grabbed Janey by the shoulders and shoved her hard. Janey crashed into the glass coffee table. It shattered.
Isiah grabbed a wooden baseball bat from the corner. He raised it, his face twisted in ugly fury. "I'll break your legs, you ungrateful bitch!"
Carissa didn't flinch. She stepped directly into the swing path. She pointed a finger at her own forehead. "Do it. Kill me. Because if you don't, I'm going to the police, and I will watch you rot in prison for human trafficking."
Isiah's arms trembled. The look in her eyes terrified him. He slowly lowered the bat, spitting on the floor. "You're a monster."
Carissa looked around the room. A room paid for with her son's life. Every ounce of love she'd ever had for this man evaporated.
She picked up a pair of craft scissors from the side table. She grabbed a chunk of her own hair and sliced it off. The dark strands dropped onto the glass-covered rug.
She pulled out her cracked phone. The screen lit up with a photo of Isadore's pale, smiling face. She stared at it for a long moment. The violent tremor in her fingers slowly faded. Her eyes shifted from the wreckage of her past to the cold, undeniable reality of what she had to endure for her son's future. The fire of her vengeance cooled into hardened, unbreakable armor.
"I have no family," Carissa said, her voice dropping to a dead monotone. "If you ever come near me again, I will drag you to hell with me."
She turned and walked out, slamming the rusted door so hard the frame rattled.
Outside, she leaned against the brick wall. She tilted her head back, refusing to let the tears fall. She pulled out her phone and dialed the lawyer's number.
"I'll sign the natural conception agreement," she said, her voice steady.
She hung up. She was going to use the Gates family's power to take back everything that was hers.
